Holocaust Denial

Holocaust
Denial

The Politics of Perfidy

Edited by Robert Solomon Wistrich

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Table of Contents
Robert Solomon Wistrich
Introduction: Lying about the Holocaust 1

Michael Shafir
Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 27

Joanna Michlic
The Jedwabne Debate: Reshaping Polish National Mythology 67

Simon Epstein
Roger Garaudy, Abbé Pierre and the French Negationists 85

Alain Goldschläger
The Trials of Ernst Zündel 109

Milton Shain and Margo Bastos

Muslim Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in Postwar South Africa 137

Danny Ben-Moshe
Holocaust Denial “Down Under” 157

Rotem Kowner
The Strange Case of Japanese “Revisionism” 181

Mark Weitzman
Globalization, Conspiracy Theory, and the Shoah 195

Jeffrey Herf
Broadcasting Antisemitism to the Middle East:
Nazi Propaganda during the Holocaust 213

Matthias Küntzel
Judeophobia and the Denial of the Holocaust in Iran 235
vi Table of Contents

Robert Solomon Wistrich

Negationism, Antisemitism, and Anti-Zionism 257

Notes on Contributors 269

Index 271
Robert Solomon Wistrich
Introduction: Lying about the Holocaust
Holocaust denial is a postwar phenomenon at whose core lies the rejection of the
historical fact that six million Jews were murdered by the Nazis during World War
II. Alongside explicit repudiation of the Holocaust, denial includes the minimiza-
tion, banalization, and relativization of the relevant facts and events, so as to cast
doubt on the uniqueness or authenticity of what happened during the Shoah.¹
These softer variants of Holocaust denial are designed to gain public accep-
tance for its viewpoint as the “other side” of a legitimate debate. According to
the hardline deniers or “revisionists” (as they misleadingly describe themselves),
the extermination of the Jews never actually took place: the German authorities
never planned to kill the Jews of Europe, and they never built or operated any
death camps in which Jews were gassed. Most revisionist accounts rarely put
Jewish losses between 1939 and 1945 above 300,000 persons, and these deaths
are usually blamed on wartime deprivations, hardship, and disease.
According to the deniers, the Nazi concept of a “Final Solution” always meant
only the emigration of the Jews, not their annihilation. The Jews “missing” from
Europe after 1945 are assumed to have resurfaced in the United States (as illegal
immigrants), in Israel, or elsewhere. The massive documentation on the Holo-
caust—including official papers of the Third Reich, statements by Nazi criminals,
eyewitness accounts by Jewish survivors, diaries, memoirs, and the mountains of
evidence from court trials—are invariably dismissed by deniers as unreliable and
fantastic or as an outright lie.² For the deniers, no testimony by Jews is acceptable,
because it was the Jews who invented the Holocaust “myth” in the first place, to
serve their own financial and political ends. In the same way, all the volumes of

1 For earlier overviews of the subject, see Gill Seidel, The Holocaust Denial (Leeds 1986); Pierre
Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory. Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust (New York 1992);
and Deborah E. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory
(Toronto 1993). A more recent study is Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying History:
Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (Berkeley, Calif. 2002). On
French Holocaust denial, see Florent Brayard, Comment l’idée vint à M. Rassinier, Naissance du
révisionnisme (Paris 1996); Nadine Fresco, Fabrication d’un antisémite (Paris 1999); and Valérie
Igounet, Histoire du négationnisme en France (Paris 2000).
2 For typical examples of this literature, see Paul Rassinier, Le drame des Juifs Européens (Paris
1964); Thies Christopherson, Die Auschwitz Lüge (Mohrkirch 1973); Richard Harwood [pseud. of
Richard Verrall], Did Six Million Really Die? The Truth at Last (Ladbroke 1974); and Arthur Butz,
The Hoax of the Twentieth Century (Torrance, Calif. 1976). The last two works were published by
the Historical Review Press in the United Kingdom.
2 Robert Solomon Wistrich

documentation assembled by the Allies at the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal in

1946 are rejected: they are seen as part of a vengeful act of injustice by the victors,
who stand accused by the deniers of having mistreated the Germans.³
According to the godfather of American “revisionist” historians, Harry Elmer
Barnes, what Germans suffered at Allied hands—bombing of civilians in German
cities, starvation, invasion, and the mass expulsions of ethnic Germans from
Eastern Europe after 1945—was far “more brutal and painful than the alleged
exterminations in the gas chambers.”⁴ As for postwar Nazi testimony, the deniers
allege that German defendants had no choice after 1945 but to confess guilt to
false charges in the hope of receiving clemency. Confessions such as those of
the Auschwitz commandant, Rudolf Höss, are routinely regarded by Holocaust
deniers as having been extracted through the use of torture and humiliation.
The mendacious propaganda of the Holocaust deniers relies on a number of
standard techniques. They like to focus relentlessly on any discrepancies in the
testimonies of witnesses, contradictions in documents or disagreements among
scholars, in order to undermine the credibility of what they call the Holocaust
“story.” They make much play of the fact that no explicit order from Hitler for a
mass murder of the Jews has been found; that the Wannsee Conference of January
1942 did not refer to gassings in the present or future; or that Allied aerial recon-
naissance of Auschwitz did not indicate gas chambers or crematoria with con-
stantly burning chimneys. The deniers also cynically exploit the ambiguity of
Nazi euphemisms like Sonderbehandlung (special treatment) for the gassing of
Jews to suggest that this term actually mean “privileged” treatment. They provide
similarly fake interpretations for the forced “evacuation” of Jews to the East.⁵
The “revisionists” usually explain away the large number of crematoria in
the death camps by claiming that these were a means of dealing rapidly with

3 See Maurice Bardèche, Nuremberg ou la Terre promise (Paris 1948); Paul Rassinier, Le
Mensonge d’Ulysse (Paris 1950); Richard Harwood [pseud. of Richard Verrall], Nuremberg and
Other War Crimes (Ladbroke 1978); Austin J. App, The Holocaust Put in Historical Perspective,”
Journal of Historical Review (henceforth HJR) (Spring 1980).
4 Harry Elmer Barnes, Blasting the Historical Blackout (Torrance, Calif.: Liberty Bell
Publications, 1976) and idem, Barnes against the Blackout: Essays against Interventionism
(Torrance, Calif. 1991), both published by the Institute for Historical Review. On the American
“revisionist” school, see Lucy. S. Dawidowicz, “Lies about the Holocaust,” Commentary 70,
no. 6 (Dec. 1980): 31–37; it also appears in idem, What is the Use of Jewish History? (New York
1992), 84–100.
5 See ADL, “‘Holocaust Revisionism’: A Denial of History,” Facts 26, no. 2 (June 1980); and
Roger Eatwell, “The Holocaust Denial: A Study in Propaganda Technique,” in Neo-Fascism in
Europe, edited by Luciano Chales et al. (London 1991), 120–43; see also Danny Ben-Moshe,
“Holocaust Denial in Australia” in this volume.
 Introduction: Lying about the Holocaust 3

the growing number of victims of typhus and other epidemics toward the end
of the war. At the same time, they like to suggest that most photographs of the
Holocaust showing the liberation of the camps are nothing but fakes or else have
been presented in a distorted way to exaggerate German barbarity. In any case,
the Allies themselves were to blame. Through their ruthless bombing, they had
created the total breakdown in the supply of food and medicine that produced the
epidemics and the emaciated victims, whose condition so shocked the eyes of a
disbelieving world in 1945. Moreover, by juggling world Jewish population figures
before and after World War II, the deniers generally maintain that Jewish losses
in the camps remained in the hundreds of thousands rather than in the millions.⁶
All these arguments and many other lies can be found in The Six Million Swindle:
Blackmailing the German People for Hard Marks with Fabricated Corpses (1973) by
Austin J. App, formerly a professor of English at La Salle College in Philadelphia.
App, whose antisemitism was quite explicit, blamed Communists as well as Israel
and world Jewry for inventing the myth of the gas chambers to divert attention
from their own crimes.
Holocaust “revisionists” have for some time focused special attention on the
gas chambers. The French revisionist and literary critic, Robert Faurisson, extrap-
olating from American gas chamber executions of single prisoners and evidence
about the commercial use of Zyklon B as a disinfectant, deduced to his own sat-
isfaction that mass gassings were impossible in Auschwitz.⁷ This assertion was
then “tested” by Fred Leuchter, an unlicensed American engineer financed by
the revisionists, who took forensic samples in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek
and could find no significant traces of hydrocyanic acid (the toxin in Zyklon B).⁸
Leuchter’s evidence was dismissed at the 1988 trial in Toronto of Ernst Zündel, a
German-Canadian neo-Nazi and “revisionist.” Leuchter’s complete lack of exper-
tise and credibility was summarily exposed.⁹ This did not stop the British his-

6 For examples of “revisionist” juggling with figures, see Harwood, Did Six Million Really
Die?, 6–7; and the English language compilation of Rassinier’s work, Debunking the Genocide
Myth (Torrance, Calif. 1978). For an analysis, see Georges Wellers, La Solution Finale et la
Mythomanie Néo-Nazie: L’existence des Chambres à Gaz, Le Nombre des Victimes (Paris
1979); also Wolfgang Benz, ed. Dimension des Völkermords. Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des
Nationalsozialismus (Munich 1991).
7 Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory, 61–62.
8 For information about Leuchter, see ADL, Hitler’s Apologists: The Anti-Semitic Propaganda of
Holocaust “Revisionism.” (New York 1993), 8–10; Michael Schmidt, The New Reich. Penetrating
the Secrets of Today’s Neo-Nazi Networks (London 1993), 198–99.
9 Shermer and Grobman, Denying History, 45–46, 64–67, 129–30; see also Alain
Goldschläger, “The Trials of Ernst Zündel” in this volume.
4 Robert Solomon Wistrich

torian and Holocaust denier, David Irving, from publishing the Leuchter Report
in 1989, declaring that it was “the end of the line” for the Auschwitz “myth.”¹⁰
Leuchter’s claims would be decisively refuted by Jean-Claude Pressac in his Aus-
chwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers (1990), but this has not
prevented his lies from taking on a life of their own in “revisionist” circles.
Among present-day Holocaust deniers, apart from Irving, there are very few
historians. As far back as 1977, in his best-selling Hitler’s War, Irving groundlessly
asserted that the mass murder of Jews had been carried on behind Hitler’s back.
In his published work, he has been a consistent apologist for the Nazis and a
denigrator of Winston Churchill and Allied leaders. For many years, he main-
tained a close connection with the Deutsche Volksunion (DVU), an extreme Right
grouping in Germany that consistently deplored Nazi war crimes trials and made
no bones about its sympathy with the Hitler regime. As a result of the Zündel
trial in May 1988, Irving embraced fully-fledged Holocaust denial. In May 1992, he
was fined by a Munich court for claiming that the Auschwitz gas chambers were
“fakes” built after the war to attract tourists to Poland. Banned from a growing list
of countries, he still remains the most publicized personality involved in Holo-
caust denial in England, with a small but enthusiastic following in Canada, Aus-
tralia, Germany and the United States.¹¹
However, in the spring of 2000 in the High Court of London, Irving brought
a libel suit against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and her British pub-
lisher, Penguin Books, for having alleged that he was “one of the most danger-
ous spokespersons for Holocaust denial.” Irving lost his case, and the verdict
undoubtedly dealt a serious blow to Holocaust denial in Western Europe, though
by no means a decisive knockout. Already in his brief opening statement, Richard
Rampton QC, representing Deborah Lipstadt, declared that Irving was “not an
historian at all, but a falsifier of history. To put it bluntly, he is a liar.” The British
judge, Charles Gray, in his 350-page verdict, was no less unequivocal. Not only did
he determine that Irving qualified “as a Holocaust denier,” but he also character-
ized him as a “right-wing pro-Nazi polemicist,” content to mix with neo-fascists
and sharing “many of their racist and anti-semitic prejudices.”¹² In 2006, Irving

10 David Irving, Foreword, The Leuchter Report (London: Focal Point, 1989). At the 1989 con-
ference of the Institute for Historical Review in California, Irving characterized Leuchter as “the
best-qualified specialist on gas chambers.” See ADL Fact-Finding Report (New York 1989), 9.
Shermer and Grobman, Denying History, 129–33.
11 On Irving’s neo-Nazi connections and popularity in far Right circles in Germany, see
Schmidt, The New Reich, 195–99.
12 Richard J. Evans, Lying about Hitler. History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial (New York
2002); for Judge Gray’s verdict on the case, see ibid., 225–43.
 Introduction: Lying about the Holocaust 5

was tried and sentenced to jail for three years in Austria, for negationist remarks
he had made on a visit there seventeen years earlier. In Austria, as in Germany,
Switzerland, France, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and a number of other European
countries, denying the Holocaust is a crime. Nor is Irving the only denier to have
been prosecuted. In the United States, however, denial is not liable to prosecu-
tion, despite its malicious falsehoods.
Holocaust denial in the United States began with Harry Elmer Barnes, a pas-
sionate opponent of America’s entry into World War I and its involvement in the
war against Nazi Germany. Toward the end of his life, Barnes became literally
obsessed with what he termed the “historical blackout”—a conspiracy against
publishing his “isolationist” views. By the mid-1960s, he was also denying that
Nazi Germany had committed mass murder.¹³ It was Barnes who encouraged a
former Harvard student, David Hoggan, to go to a neo-Nazi publishing house
with his Der erzwungene Krieg (The forced war, 1961)—the core of his dissertation
about the origins of World War II, which presented the British as warmongers, the
Poles as provocateurs, and Hitler as an angel of peace. Hoggan’s book was warmly
received by the German radical Right. Eight years later he brought out a booklet,
The Myth of the Six Million (1969), which attacked all the existing eyewitness tes-
timony about the murder of European Jewry while distorting, suppressing, and
inventing sources in the classic revisionist manner. It was published by Noontide
Press, a subsidiary of Liberty Lobby (headed by Willis Carto), the best-organized
and wealthiest antisemitic organization in the United States.
Carto, a racist and white supremacist, had for decades promoted the idea that
international Jewish bankers were at the heart of a conspiracy that threatened the
“racial heritage” of the white Western world. Like many other Holocaust deniers,
he believed that the Western Allies in World War II fought against the wrong
enemy in Nazi Germany.¹⁴ Instead, they should have allied with Hitler against
communism. In 1966, Carto took control of the American Mercury, an antisemitic
monthly that almost immediately began to feature major articles on Holocaust
denial. The theme was also given considerable prominence in the Liberty Lobby
newspaper, The Spotlight, which could claim at its peak a circulation of around
300,000 copies. Carto was indeed the eminence grise of Holocaust denial in the
United States. In 1979 he created the Institute of Historical Review and its annual
Journal of Historical Review (which began publication in 1980 in Torrance, Cal-
ifornia). The journal succeeded in giving “revisionism” a deceptively scholarly

13 Dawidowicz, What is the Use of Jewish History?, 87–90.

14 On Carto’s background and beliefs, see Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust; for a sample of his
style, Willis A. Carto, “On the Uses of History,” JHR 3, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 26–30.
6 Robert Solomon Wistrich

format, learned footnotes, and involvement in organizing “revisionist” interna-

tional conventions. It heralded the sinister determination of Holocaust deniers in
the 1980s to win academic legitimacy.
The most significant example of new-style “critical” and “scientific” Holo-
caust revisionism appeared over thirty-five years ago in The Hoax of the Twenti-
eth Century (1976) by Arthur Butz, a professor of electrical engineering and com-
puter science at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Butz adopted a
pseudo-scientific tone, claiming that so-called “exterminationists” (by which he
meant historians who believe in the death camps) had either misinterpreted or
deliberately distorted the evidence. In his view, there had never been any exter-
minations at Auschwitz, which he described as a huge industrial plant and a
“highly productive” work camp. The chemical Zyklon B had been nothing but
insecticide for disinfecting worker’s clothing; the gas chambers were in fact
baths, saunas, and mortuaries; the stench from the camp was due to hydrogena-
tion and other chemical processes, not to the burning of dead bodies.¹⁵ For the
past three decades, similar falsehoods have been parroted by Holocaust deniers
around the world.
Butz blamed the Holocaust “hoax” on three main sources: Allied propaganda
designed to justify the high economic and human costs of war; Zionist machi-
nations, which had successfully manipulated the Allied powers, especially the
United States; and Communist self-interest in magnifying Nazi atrocities. But it
was above all the Jewish and Zionist role in this world conspiracy that was central
to Butz and his followers. The Holocaust was vital to Zionists in order to gener-
ate the popular sympathy necessary for creating the State of Israel.¹⁶ Like most
deniers, Butz also believed that the emotional grip of the “Holocaust myth” on
the world enabled Israel to blackmail a prostate postwar Germany for reparations
and to extract enormous political dividends from a guilt-ridden America. More-
over, the Holocaust, by becoming a new “canon of faith in the Jewish religion,”
had strengthened the ties of the international Jewish community and made it
more powerful than ever. Butz—himself a consummate falsifier of history—saw
his task as debunking this “universe of lies” constructed by occult Zionist forces.
The unemotional tone of his book, with its seemingly meticulous investigation

15 See Eatwell, “The Holocaust Denial,” 120 ff; and Peter I. Haupt, “A Universe of Lies:
Holocaust Revisionism and the Myth of Jewish World Conspiracy,” Patterns of Prejudice 25, no 1
(Summer 1991); for information about Butz, see Facts 26, no 2 (June 1980): 7–8.
16 For the connection between anti-Zionist antisemitism and Holocaust denial, Alain
Finkielkraut, L’Avenir d’une négation. Réflexions sur la question du génocide (Paris 1982), 135 ff.
 Introduction: Lying about the Holocaust 7

of the facts, provided a convenient mask for its underlying belief in a secret and
sinister Jewish conspiracy controlling international events.
In Great Britain, a role analogous to that of Butz’s work was played by the
1974 booklet, Did Six Million Die? The Truth at Last by Richard Harwood (the
pseudonym of Richard Verrall, editor of the British National Front journal, Spear-
head). Harwood borrowed heavily from Hoggan’s Myth of the Six Million and from
Frenchman Paul Rassinier, one of the founders of the so-called “revisionist”
school in Europe. Typically, he rationalized Nazi antisemitism, describing it as a
legitimate response to attacks by “international Jewry.” He pretended that Hitler
only wanted to transfer all Jews to Madagascar. Like other deniers, he also con-
cocted the fabrication that population figures after the war proved Jewish losses
to have been minimal. The diary of Anne Frank, as in all the denial literature, was
naturally dismissed as a hoax.¹⁷
The political significance of Harwood’s pamphlet lay more in its comments
on race problems in Britain than in its ludicrous scholarly pretensions. The
author maintained that Anglo-Saxons could not speak out openly about the need
for racial self-preservation because the Holocaust “lie” had placed the subject
beyond the pale. Britain and other European countries faced the gravest danger
from the presence of “alien races” in their midst (Africans, Asians, and Arabs,
as well as Jews), which was leading to the destruction of their culture and of
their national heritage. The Jews had allegedly poured millions into supporting
“race-mixing,” in the hope of securing their global domination by weakening
nationalist identities throughout the world. Self-defense against this “Jewish”
peril had been sapped by the Holocaust, which had given Nazism and other
forms of self-assertive racial nationalism a bad name. If the mass annihilation
of the Jewish people could be deconstructed as a myth, then movements like the
National Front in Great Britain could once again become feasible options.¹⁸ This
mania for rehabilitation has clearly been a major consideration in the widespread

17 Harwood, Did Six Million Really Die?, 19; Butz, Hoax of the Twentieth Century, 37. The assault
on the authenticity of the Anne Frank diary is an obsession with many Holocaust deniers. The
Swedish antisemite and negationist, Dietlieb Felderer in 1978 in his own Bible Researcher
Press published an attack on the diary; it was republished by the Institute of Historical Review
under the title, Anne Frank’s Diary—A Hoax. The French “revisionist” Robert Faurisson two years
later published Le Journal d’Anne Frank est-it authentique? (Paris 1980). See David Barnouw
and Gerrold ven der Stroom, eds., The Diary of Anne Frank. The Critical Edition (New York 1989),
84–101, which deals with the Holocaust deniers and others who have raised doubts about the
diaries, by providing exhaustive and detailed documentation of all editions.
18 For the British far Right background, see Gill Seidel, The Holocaust Denial; and on the
ideological continuities between old and new fascists, see Michael Billig, “The Extreme Right:
8 Robert Solomon Wistrich

adoption of Holocaust denial by extreme Right groups worldwide during the past
four decades.
It was, however, in France that Holocaust “revisionism” put down its firmest
roots and attained for awhile a modest degree of academic respectability. Already
in 1948, the prominent French fascist, Maurice Bardèche had published his
Nuremberg ou la Terre Promise (Nuremberg or the Promised Land), which bluntly
insisted that World Jewry and the Allies had instigated World War II; they had
shamelessly falsified facts at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, and invented the
fiction of the gas chambers.¹⁹ But it was a former socialist, Paul Rassinier, himself
a prisoner at Buchenwald and other concentration camps, who first gave “revi-
sionism” a certain plausibility for true believers.²⁰ Rassinier was partly motivated
by a bitter hatred of communism, which gradually drove him toward developing
an apologia for Nazism. Initially, he did not deny the Holocaust, though he dis-
missed all survivor testimony about death camps as grossly exaggerated. After
1950, Rassinier began to attack Jewish historians and scholars as “falsifiers” and
to bitterly denounce Israel and world Jewry for hugely magnifying the death toll
to increase their “ill-gotten gains.”²¹
By the early 1960s, Rassinier was adamant that the “genocide myth” had
been invented by the “Zionist establishment.” At the same time, in his writings
he transformed the Nazis from perpetrators into benefactors, insisting that there
was no official German policy of extermination. He even managed to praise the
“humane” behavior of the SS. Already in 1955, Rassinier’s book, Le mensonge
d’Ulysse (Ulysses’s lie), with a preface by Albert Paraz (a neo-fascist friend of the
fanatically antisemitic French writer Céline), had been published by an extreme
Right firm. So were his books on the trial of Adolf Eichmann and Le Drame des
Juifs Européens (The drama of European Jews, 1964), which categorically denied
the existence of the gas chambers. By the mid-1960s, Rassinier had become
closely identified with the French far Right. In 1964, he lost a libel case against

Continuities in anti-Semitic Conspiracy in post-war Europe,” in The Nature of the Right, edited
by R. Eatwell and N. O’Sullivan (London 1989).
19 Bardèche was the brother-in-law of the French literary fascist Robert Brasillach (hanged for
collaboration in 1945), and edited the neo-fascist journal Défense de L’Occident. A number of
his books and articles in the early postwar period anticipated “revisionist” theses. See Pierre
Vidal-Naquet and Limor Yagil, Holocaust Denial in France. A Unique Phenomenon (Tel Aviv: Tel
Aviv University, Project for the Study of Anti-Semitism, 1995), 27–31.
20 For Rassinier, see Vidal-Naquet and Yagil, Holocaust Denial, 31–35; and Finkielkraut,
L’Avenir d’une négation, 118–31.
21 Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory, 31–38 for an analysis of Rassinier’s bizarre
calculations.
 Introduction: Lying about the Holocaust 9

Bernard Lecache (head of the International League against Antisemitism [LICA]),

who had publicly accused him of making common cause with neo-Nazis in his
revisionist writings.
Rassinier’s most influential successor in France durig the following decade
was Robert Faurisson, formerly a professor of literature at the University of Lyon,
and a critic who claimed to be entirely apolitical while in practice whitewashing
the Germans and constantly invoking the enormous power of the Jews. In 1978,
Faurisson published his first major article denying the existence of gas chambers.
That same year, Darquier de Pellepoix (former commissioner for Jewish questions
in the Vichy government) created a scandal in France with his notorious remark,
“Only lice were gassed in Auschwitz.”²² Two years later, on December 17, 1980,
Faurisson declared on French radio:

The claim of the existence of gas chambers and the genocide of Jews by Hitler constitutes
one and the same historical lie, which opened the way to a gigantic political and financial
fraud of which the principal beneficiaries are the state of Israel and international Zionism,
and the principal victims the Germans and the entire Palestinian people.²³

In 1981, Faurisson published his Mémoire en défense contre ceux qui m’accusent
de falsifier l’histoire: la question des chambres de gaz, with a preface by the
American Jewish scholar, virulent anti-Zionist and left-wing libertarian, Noam
Chomsky. Although Chomsky claimed that he had not read Faurisson’s work, he
publicly deplored efforts to silence Faurisson, saying that he was the target of “a
vicious campaign of harassment, intimidation, slander,” and strongly supported
his right to free speech. Chomsky absurdly referred to Faurisson as a liberal and
praised his associate Serge Thion (a prolific left-wing Holocaust denier) as a “lib-
ertarian socialist scholar.” Amazingly, Chomsky even wrote that he could see “no
hint of antisemitic implications in Faurisson’s work” or in denial of the Holo-
caust as such.²⁴ Nor did Chomsky, himself a savage critic of the United States and

22 On the background to the scandal, see Henry H. Weinberg, The Myth of the Jew in France,
1967–1982 (New York 1987), 59–64; see also the book’s introduction by Robert S. Wistrich.
23 C. Columbani, “Des universitaires s’affrontent sur le cas Faurisson,” Le Monde, 30 June
1981; Nadine Fresco, “Les Redresseurs de Morts,” Temps Modernes (June 1980); Vidal-Naquet
and Yagil, Denial, 49–60.
24 On Faurisson and Chomsky, Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory, 65–73 (first published
in 1981); and the booklet by Werner Cohn, The Hidden Alliances of Noam Chomsky (New York
1988), 11–12. The Holocaust deniers of the Institute for Historical Review approvingly published
Noam Chomsky’s article, “All Denials of Free Speech Undercut a Democratic Society,” in its
house organ, the JHR 7, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 123–27.
10 Robert Solomon Wistrich

Zionism for decades, find anything antisemitic in the claim that the Holocaust “is
being exploited, viciously so, by apologists for Israeli repression and violence.”
Faurisson’s writings were distributed in France by both the extreme Right,
associated with the Parisian bookstore Ogmios, and the extreme Left publishing
house La Vielle Taupe (The old mole) under the leadership of Pierre Guillaume.²⁵
Not surprisingly, Guillaume and Ogmios joined forces in 1987 to found a quar-
terly journal specializing in Holocaust denial, Annales d’Histoire Révisioniste. For
the extreme Left, neither antisemitism nor identification with Nazi ideology or
nostalgia for totalitarianism was the primary motivation for their assault on the
“myth” of the gas chambers. They began from a dogmatic revolutionary position
that Nazism was no worse than Western bourgeois capitalism and that both were
equally guilty of crimes against the working class. By adopting the arguments
of Rassinier and Faurisson, the revisionist far Left around Guillaume and Thion
believed it could undermine the postwar anti-fascist consensus of the democratic
world, based on the idea that Nazism and fascism were somehow unique evils.²⁶
If there were no gas chambers, they argued, then there was nothing unique about
Nazi oppression. Eccentrics on the anarchist Left like Gabriel Cohn-Bendit even
suggested that Soviet propaganda had concocted the “legend” of the gas cham-
bers to cover up Stalinist crimes and make the Gulag (the Soviet prison camp
system) seem less oppressive. Stalin in their eyes was no better than Hitler—a
position also widely shared on the far Right and among some German and Euro-
pean conservatives.
Faurisson’s attractiveness to the far Left and even to some liberals in France
was increased by the court trials he underwent between 1979 and 1983, which in
the eyes of civil libertarians made him into a victim of censorship and repression,
not to mention a symbol of free speech. Like Butz in the United States, Fauris-
son claimed to be challenging the “religious dogma” of the Shoah in the name
of “enlightened” visions of science, progress, and a dispassionate search for the
truth. Holocaust “revisionism,” in a pathetic parody of the Dreyfusard struggle
for “revision” a century earlier, assumed the mantle of martyrdom for dissident
views, of a sect wrongly persecuted solely for its pursuit of truth and justice.²⁷ The

25 See Pierre Guillaume, Droit et Histoire (Paris 1986); and Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory,
ix–xxi.
26 See Serge Thion, Vérité Historique ou vérité politique (Paris 1980); Finkielkraut, L’avenir,
135ff; Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory, 19, 24–25, 71–72.
27 The analogy and its bitter ironies are touched on in Jeffrey Mehlman’s perceptive
introduction to Assassins of Memory, ix–xxi.
 Introduction: Lying about the Holocaust 11

ultimate lie was now masquerading under the banner of Emile Zola’s passionate
war-cry of 1898 that “the truth was on the march.”
Another strategy adopted by “revisionists” of all colors is to emphasize that
there have been several holocausts in history (the lower case is deliberate), and
that the Jews cannot therefore claim a monopoly on suffering. The left-wing
lawyer Jacques Vergès, who defended the Nazi criminal Klaus Barbie in France
in the late 1980s, consistently compared French colonial oppression in Algeria
with the Holocaust precisely in order to relativize and neutralize its uniqueness.²⁸
Although Vergès stopped short of denying that the Holocaust actually happened,
there were others who used such relativist arguments as part of a more wide-rang-
ing effort to negate the Shoah. Thus Pierre Guillaume and his followers could find
no difference between the Holocaust and American internment of Japanese-born
U.S. citizens during World War II; between French official harassment of Spanish
Republicans or anti-Nazis before 1939, and German concentration camps in
wartime; or between what happened to millions of Russians, Poles, and Ukraini-
ans who were shot or died in German camps, and the fate of the Jews.
The infiltration of the universities by so-called “negationists”was particu-
larly striking in France. In 1985, Henri Rocques, who had been active in extreme
Right movements for decades, received a doctorate in history with honors from
the University of Nantes for a dissertation that challenged the existence of gas
chambers at Bełżec, rejecting the eyewitness testimony of Kurt Gerstein on the
subject.²⁹ The judges for his dissertation included some distinguished academi-
cians, who were mostly influenced by the ideas of the French New Right. Among
Rocques’s sympathizers was Bernard Notin, a professor of economics at the Uni-
versity of Lyon, who, writing in 1989 in a prestigious journal, relied on Faurisson
and Thion when calling into question the number of Jewish victims in World War
II.³⁰ Not only in the academy could one find such syntheses of rightist or left-
wing extremism. Negationist publications like Révision in the late 1980s (though
harassed by government legislation) were even more radical than their prede-
cessors in the 1970s, with roots in the anarchist Left as well as the New Right.
Holocaust denial provided the link between conspiracy theories about Jews and

28 Jacques Givet, Le Cas Vergès (Paris 1986); Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memo-ry, 129–36.
29 Henri Rocques, Les confessions de Kurt Gerstein: Étude Comparative des Différentes
Versions (Ph.D. diss., University of Lyon, III, 1985). On the Rocques affair, see Henry H.
Weinberg, “Revisionism: The Rocques Affair,” Midstream 33, no. 4 (April 1987): 11–13; and
Vidal-Naquet and Yagil, Holocaust Denial in France, 61–64 for useful information about Rocques
and the academicians at the University of Nantes who unanimously approved his dissertation.
30 See Henry Rousso, Le dossier Lyon III. Le rapport sur le racisme et le négationnisme à
L’université Jean-Moulin (Paris 2004), 134–71. On the Rocques affair, see ibid., 95–133.
12 Robert Solomon Wistrich

freemasons, anticommunism, and virulent anti-Zionism. It has indeed become

one of the most attractive weapons for those determined to demonize Jews and
defame the State of Israel.
Holocaust denial in France, as in other European countries, was linked from
the outset to efforts on the far Right to restore the “positive” image of Nazism and
prewar fascism. Its impact grew from the early 1980s with the rise of the ultrana-
tionalist Front National of Jean-Marie Le Pen, which became solidly entrenched
in the French political landscape. The Front National did not, it is true, openly
and officially circulate Holocaust denial propaganda, but it has had a clear inter-
est in minimizing and casting doubt on the Shoah. Negationism also appealed to
a number of anarchists, dissident Marxists, and ex-Trotskyists, as well as to some
Catholic integrists and disoriented liberals.
A revealing example of how Holocaust denial crosses political boundaries
can be found in the scandal involving Abbé Pierre, a missionary Catholic, pop-
ulist defender of the poor and former member of the Résistance. Abbé Pierre,
an extremely popular media star in France, was already in his eighties when he
came out in support of his old friend Roger Garaudy, whose 1995 book, Les Mythes
Fondateurs de la politique Israélienne, was an unadulterated piece of Holocaust
denial. Garaudy, an ex-Stalinist, ex-Catholic, and leftist convert to Islam, was
immensely appreciated in the Arab world for his vitriolic hostility to Israel and
the “Judeo-Christian” West, further reinforced by Les Mythes Fondateurs—which
was not only anti-Zionist but clearly anti-Jewish. When Abbé Pierre nonetheless
rallied to Garaudy’s Holocaust “revisionism,” it caused a considerable stir.³¹
In pre-unification West Germany, as in France, efforts to repudiate the Holo-
caust had begun in the 1950s, and ever since it has become a staple theme of
neo-Nazis, German nationalists, the far Right, and the Deutsche National Zeitung.
But it was only in the 1970s that books published by Germans which openly
denied the Holocaust, began to attract attention. In 1973, a former SS officer and
neo-Nazi, Thies Christopherson (who had actually worked on the periphery of
Auschwitz in 1944), published his scurrilous Die Auschwitz Lüge (the Auschwitz
lie).³² He was followed by the jurist Wilhelm Stäglich, whose book, Der Aus-
chwitz-Mythos (The Auschwitz myth, 1979), led Göttingen University to deprive
him of the title of doctor. Both authors were determined to prove that the Holo-
caust was a propaganda hoax designed to stigmatize and shame the Germans

31 “Le faux pas de l’abbé Pierre,” L’Express, 25 Apr. 1996, 33; Eric Conan and Sylviane Stein,
“Ce qui a fait chuter l’abbé Pierre,” L’Express, 2 May 1996, 20–25.
32 See Schmidt, The New Reich, 224–27 for some information on Christopherson.
 Introduction: Lying about the Holocaust 13

into an unjustified sense of guilt.³³ The aim of the deniers was to decriminalize
German history by presenting a more favorable picture of National Socialism and
above all by denying the existence of the gas chambers.
Since the late 1980s, the emphasis in Germany moved, however, to more sci-
entific and technical arguments to prove the impossibility of mass murder in any
of the death camps. Hence the macabre concern with the capacity of the crema-
toria, the time needed to burn a body, and the properties of Zyklon B poison gas.
In 1992, Germar Rudolf, a chemist then employed at the prestigious Max Planck
Institute for Solid State Research, wrote an expert opinion on “The Formation
and Provability of Cyanide connections in the ‘Gas Chambers’ of Auschwitz.”
Rudolf’s “chemical analyses” had been commissioned by one of Germany’s
veteran and best-known neo-Nazis, Otto Ernst Remer, a former major-general in
the Wehrmacht, who had suppressed the July plot of the German resistance to
assassinate Hitler in 1944.³⁴ In 1992, Remer stood trial for denying the genocide
of the Jews, and the Rudolf Report (rejected by the court) was part of his defense.
In an accompanying letter to the report, Remer wrote that in an age of religious
freedom, “all of us must oppose the ‘holocaust religion’ which the courts have
forced upon us.”³⁵
Also in 1992, the then-chairman of the extreme Right NPD, Günther Deckert,
was fined and given a suspended sentence for inciting racism and insulting
the victims of the Holocaust. In June 1994, in a judicial review of the case that
rescinded the sentence, Deckert was described as a man of “strong character
with a sense of responsibility,” who was motivated by the understandable wish
“to strengthen resistance among the German people to Jewish claims based
on the Holocaust.” The Karlsruhe High Court’s empathy extended to Deckert’s
bitter resentment of financial, moral, and political reparations fifty years after
the war, and the judgment even considered his historical “revisionism” to be
an extenuating circumstance. The judge’s substantiation several times called
Jews “parasites” who had misused their situation as survivors to place a heavy
financial burden on the German people. This ruling aroused a storm of public
indignation.³⁶ It was denounced as a disgrace by Chancellor Helmut Kohl and
condemned at the time by the German justice minister. By December 1994, it had

33 Wilhelm Stäglich, Der Auschwitz-Mythos (Tübingen 1979). Stäglich’s approach is more

straightforwardly Nazi.
34 N.a., Gutachten über die behaupteten Gaskammern von Auschwitz (Bad Kissingen, October
1992).
35 For a portrait of Remer, see Schmidt, The New Reich, 105–11.
36 On the Deckert case, see Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 11 and 15 Aug. 1994.
14 Robert Solomon Wistrich

been reversed by the federal German court. The Deckert case underlined the fact
that in Germany, Holocaust denial was not only an expression of extreme Right
nationalists and illiterate skinheads, but also served as a code for a new kind of
antisemitism offering a bridge between the old and newer generation of Nazis.
However, since 1994, a bill has been enacted which permits sentences of up to five
years in jail for denying the Holocaust. One of the first to be imprisoned under this
act was Ewald Althans, a leading Munich-based neo-Nazi activist of the younger
generation, who openly spouted Holocaust denial propaganda in a documentary
film, Profession: Neo-Nazi, subsequently banned throughout most of Germany.³⁷
Open or latent antisemitism is undoubtedly the key factor behind the spread
of Holocaust denial. At the same time, “revisionists” play on the widespread
German desire to be released from shame and guilt, to “normalize” the Nazi past,
and reassert a robust patriotism. Even notable scholars like the German historian
Ernst Nolte have used arguments in their writings which are clearly taken from
the “revisionists.” Nolte, for example, has stubbornly and irrationally insisted
that a statement by Dr. Chaim Weizmann (president of the World Zionist Organi-
zation) in September 1939 that Jews would support Britain and the democracies
amounted to a declaration of war on Germany, thereby justifying Hitler’s treat-
ment of them as hostages. This is a classic negationist thesis. Moreover, Nolte has
argued that the Holocaust (except for the “technical detail” of the gas chambers)
was no different from any other massacres in the twentieth century. Even more
provocatively, he suggested that the Nazi genocide was nothing but a pale copy
of the Soviet Gulag—the Bolshevik extermination of the kulaks and other class
enemies; indeed, for Nolte, the Nazi extermination of Jews was essentially a pre-
ventive measure against “Asiatic” barbarism from the East.³⁸
These relativizing arguments of Nolte gave rise to the well-known Historiker-
streit (battle of the historians) in Germany in the mid-1980s. They were sharply
rejected by most established German historians. Nevertheless, Nolte received
considerable support from a younger generation of conservative and nationalist
historians, scholars, and writers, who regard his claims as constituting a liber-
ating act. This has been especially troubling, since in a book published in 1993,
Nolte wrote that the “radical revisionists [i.e., Holocaust deniers] have presented

37 On Althans, see Schmidt, The New Reich, 200–201.

38 On Nolte, the West German Historikerstreit, and its implications, there is already a
significant literature. See Richard J. Evans, In Hitler’s Shadow. West German Historians and the
Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past (New York 1989), 24–91. A good example of Nolte’s own
approach can be found in Ernst Nolte, “Between Myth and Revisionism? The Third Reich in the
Perspective of the 1980s,” in Aspects of the Third Reich, edited by H. W. Koch (New York 1985),
17–38.
 Introduction: Lying about the Holocaust 15

research which, if one is familiar with the source material and the critique of the
sources, is probably superior to that of the established historians in Germany.”³⁹
By contrast, in the former Soviet Union, under Communist rule, there was
no denial of Nazi war crimes, at least with regard to the fate of the Soviet popu-
lation as such. However, Soviet writings consistently masked the fact that Jews
were murdered only because they were Jews, presenting them instead as Rus-
sians, Ukrainians, and citizens of different European countries. Hence there was
no monument under Soviet rule to the overwhelmingly Jewish victims of the Babi
Yar massacre on the outskirts of Kiev in September 1941, or at other Holocaust
sites. The specificity of the Shoah was deliberately dissolved under the rubric
of millions of Soviet victims of all nationalities who suffered under German fas-
cism.⁴⁰ Things changed for the worse in the 1970s when a group of “anti-Zionist”
publicists, sponsored by the Soviet government, began to propagate the slander
that Zionist leaders had callously “collaborated” with the Nazis in the murder of
their own people. This was part of an intensive antisemitic campaign by the USSR
and the Communist bloc to present the state of Israel, Zionists, and pro-Israel
diaspora Jews as fascists who had cynically manipulated the Holocaust in order
to cover up their own crimes.⁴¹
Some Soviet “anti-Zionist” publicists also began to challenge the veracity of
the figures concerning the number of Jews killed in the Shoah. In June 1982, Lev
Korneev wrote: “The Zionists’ vile profiteering at the expense of the victims of
Hitlerism places in doubt the number, which is current in the press, of 6 million
Jews who were allegedly destroyed during World War II.” For Korneev and his
ilk, there were no limits to Zionist perfidy.⁴² This was also a favorite theme of left-
wing revisionists in the West like Lenny Brenner (an American Jewish Trotskyist),
whose book, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators (1983), was based on the premise

39 Ernst Nolte, Streitpunkte, Heutige und Künftige Kontroversen um den Nationalsozialismus

(Berlin 1993), 304.
40 Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The Holocaust and the Historians (Cambridge, Mass. 1981), 68–87;
William Korey, “Soviet Treatment of the Holocaust: History’s ‘Memory Hole,’” in Remembering
for the Future: The Impact of the Holocaust on the Contemporary World (Oxford 1988), 1357–
1365.
41 For a detailed analysis of this phenomenon, see Robert S. Wistrich, Hitler’s Apocalypse.
Jews and the Nazi Legacy (London 1985), 194–225.
42 Ibid., 205–206, 214, 217. Korey, “Soviet Treatment,” deals with Korneev in his 1988 article,
and in his book, Russian Antisemitism, Pamyat, and the Demonology of Zionism (London
1995). The article by Korneev which best represented the Soviet-style revisionism appeared in
Voenno-Istoricheski Zhurnal (6 June 1982) examining the Second World War and the “myths of
Zionist propaganda.”
16 Robert Solomon Wistrich

that Zionism and Nazism were essentially congruent. The Zionists, he insinuated,
had cynically profited from the Holocaust after their leaders had first colluded in
the genocide of Jews.⁴³ Brenner’s main political purpose was to morally delegit-
imize Israel and Zionism. He found a worthy successor in the ranting of another
American Jewish leftist, Norman Finkelstein, whose best-selling book, The Holo-
caust Industry, has been a godsend to the far Right, far Left, and Arab antisem-
ites.⁴⁴
With the end of the Cold War and the overthrow of Soviet communism, the
trend toward Holocaust denial has steadily grown in Russia and Eastern Europe.
The revolutions of 1989 restored free speech and thereby provided new openings
for political antisemitism and for popular prewar conspiracy theories like the Pro-
tocols of the Elders of Zion to be revived. Moreover, some post-Communist coun-
tries, such as Croatia and Slovakia initially looked to wartime models on which
to build their newly found statehood. During World War II, as satellites of Nazi
Germany, they had briefly enjoyed the illusion of national independence, carrying
out genocidal policies against Jews, as well as Serbs and Gypsies. The nationalist
efforts at rehabilitating Father Josef Tiso in Slovakia or Ante Pavelić in Croatia
inevitably involved excusing, denying, or even justifying their genocidal actions.
In 1989, Croatia’s president, Franjo Tudjman, wrote a book entitled Wastelands of
Historical Reality, which not only greatly minimized Jewish casualties during the
Holocaust, but also displaced the blame for Croat massacres of Serbs in World
War II onto the Jews.⁴⁵ In Slovakia, despite recent efforts to commemorate the
murdered Jews and publicize the real story of the Holocaust, there are still many
Slovaks who regard their wartime leader, Monsignor Tiso, as a national hero and
martyr. To bolster this belief, they falsely claim that the Slovak rulers were forced
by the Nazis to deport Jews, and were unaware of the true nature of the crimes
being committed in the East.

43 See Robert S. Wistrich, “Perdition: a ‘tawdry political pamphlet,’” Patterns of Prejudice 21,
no. 4 (Winter 1987): 48–50 for an analysis of left-wing “revisionism” in Great Britain, prompted
by the controversy over Jim Allen’s play Perdition about the Holocaust, Zionism, and the
Kasztner Affair. Allen, a British Trotskyist, was much influenced by Brenner’s theses.
44 See Ruth Ellen Gruber, The Struggle. The Rehabilitation of Fascist Heroes in Europe (New
York: American Jewish Committee, 1995), 32 pp; and on Slovakia, the very detailed survey
by Zora Bútorová and Zuzana Fialova, Attitudes towards Jews and the Holocaust in Slovakia
(Bratislava: Center for Social Analysis, 1993). For the wider picture, see Randolph Braham, ed.
Antisemitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Eastern Europe (New York
1995).
45 Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry (New York 2000). The German edition
reached the top of the best sellers list; Gruber, The Struggle, 22–23.
 Introduction: Lying about the Holocaust 17

In Romania, the drive to rehabilitate the wartime leader and ally of Hitler,
Marshal Ion Antonescu, also produced serious distortions of the Holocaust.
Already under the Communist dictator Nicolai Ceausescu, the official party line
was to pretend that the Romanian Holocaust did not happen, though the deporta-
tion of Jews to Auschwitz from Hungarian-controlled northern Transylvania was
deliberately emphasized in order to embarrass Hungary. After 1990, right-wing
politicians and much of the media harshly attacked President Iliescu whenever
he criticized the Antonescu regime or seemed sympathetic to Jewish efforts to
have Romanian complicity in the Holocaust recognized. His attendance at the
opening of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
over a decade ago was denounced by Romanian nationalists as a “pitiable lack of
dignity in front of the global Zionist trend of stigmatizing peoples and nations in
order to control humankind unchallenged.”⁴⁶ Since 2000, the tendency to deny
that Romanians were complicit in murdering the Jews during the Holocaust was
still present, even at the highest level.⁴⁷ The 2005 report by an independent group
of scholars on the Holocaust in Romania nonetheless represented an important
breakthrough in this regard.
In Poland, on the other hand, the blatantly antisemitic Catholic radio station,
Radio Maryja (directed by Father Tadeusz Rydzyk), which enjoys a mass audience
of several million listeners, has accused Jews in Poland and beyond of being part
of a global “Holocaust industry.” In July 2007, Father Rydzyk even asserted that
the Polish president was in the hands of the “Jewish lobby”who were supposedly
pressing extravagant restitution claims against Poland.
In Hungary, attempts to rehabilitate the wartime leader, Admiral Miklós
Horthy, which coincided with his reburial amid much public fanfare in Septem-
ber 1993, led to serious distortions that ignored his complicity in the deportation
of Jews from Hungary. True, on October 5, 1994, the Hungarian government did
officially apologize for its country’s role in the Holocaust. On the other hand,
antisemitism in recent years has grown apace in Hungary, some of it connected
with Holocaust denial. When the Hungarian Jewish novelist and Auschwitz survi-
vor, Imre Kertész, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002, he was the
butt of sharp criticism on the Right. A year earlier, he told the Spanish newspaper,

46 Michael Shafir, “Marshal Ion Antonescu and Romanian Politics,” Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty Research Report, 3, no. 6 (11 Feb. 1994); see also Carol Iancu, La Shoah en Roumanie
(Montpellier 2000); and Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid, Mihail E. Ionescu, eds., Final Report of the
International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania (Bucharest 2005).
47 On the notorious interview of Romanian President Iliescu in which he denied there was a
Holocaust in Romania, see Haaretz, 27 Aug. 2003.
18 Robert Solomon Wistrich

El País: “Today I live in a very anti-Semitic [Hungarian] society that does not like
Jews. I always felt that they forced me to be Jewish.”⁴⁸ In Hungary, as in the Baltic
States and elsewhere in post-Communist Europe, the role played by Jews in the
Soviet-dominated system before 1989 has been used to downplay the extent of
local collaboration in the Nazi Holocaust.
Negationism enlists a wide variety of strategies and assumes many different
forms adapted to the history and political cultures in which it operates. It none-
theless developed into an international movement with its own networks, gather-
ings, public forums, propaganda, and pseudo-scientific journals. Since the mid-
1970s, when it first began to crystallize in an organized way and achieve a certain
cultural legitimacy, it managed to attract considerable media attention. Though it
failed to penetrate the broad mainstream of informed public opinion and serious
scholarship in the United States or Europe, it made some inroads in its drive to
be accepted as an “alternative school” of history, especially through the internet.
Cyberspace is today the chosen highway of the Holocaust deniers, especially in
the United States. They have learned to use the Internet as a tool to amplify and
to spread their bigoted arguments and poisonous theories to a mass audience.
An early pioneer in exploiting the World Wide Web for this purpose was the Ger-
man-born Canadian hatemonger, Ernst Zündel, an inveterate showman who ran
a mini-multimedia empire out of Toronto. Though finally extradited to Germany,
Zündel was able for several decades to cast himself as a heroic warrior “against
the lie of the century,” seeking to vindicate Hitler and the Nazis while maligning
the Jews.⁴⁹ The Internet provided him with a way to circumvent increasingly strin-
gent European legislation designed to punish neo-Nazi propagandists and Holo-
caust deniers. Similarly, the Institute for Historical Review in California devel-
oped its own web sites to promote the notion that the Holocaust was a Zionist (or
Stalinist) fiction. One of the institute’s most active collaborators, Bradley Smith,
exploited the Web as an extension of his “Campus Project” to promote lies about
the Holocaust at American colleges and universities. His aim was to legitimize
denial as an authentic part of Holocaust study by perverting the commitment of
universities to open inquiry and academic freedom.
On American campuses a decade ago, the advertisements sponsored by
Smith’s deceptively-named Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust sparked
an intensive debate about the limits of free speech. Through a misguided under-
standing of the First Amendment, some campuses even accepted his texts, despite
their blatant falsification of history and gross insult to the memory of survivors.

48 “Exista medios para dominar al hombre, El País, 11 Mar. 2001.

49 ADL, Hitler’s Apologists, 37–40.
 Introduction: Lying about the Holocaust 19

In these deliberate misinformation campaigns, deniers learned to present them-

selves as martyrs for free speech, fearlessly challenging the “religious dogmas”
and the so-called taboos of what they called the Holocaust establishment and its
“thought police.”⁵⁰
The “truths” of the deniers were, of course, fabrications which ignored a
huge mass of evidence that ran counter to their conclusions. As part their aca-
demic façade, they would borrow freely from one another in a never-ending
merry-go-round of incestuous falsehoods, while pompously cultivating a veneer
of scientific objectivity. The “revisionists” were often engaged in rehabilitating
Nazism, fascism, and racism, under the guise of free speech and seeking “the
truth.” Antisemitism played a crucial role in this endeavor—especially in the Arab
world—since the Holocaust “hoax” was defined from the outset as a Jewish or
Zionist conspiracy.⁵¹ For others, anti-Zionism, allied to an unconditional pro-Pal-
estinian enthusiasm was the primary driving force. This is particularly common
on the Left and has begun to infiltrate parts of the liberal mainstream. For the
anti-globalist Left, anarchists, Trotskyists, and Third World ideologues, their
eagerness to indict Western colonialism at any price and to highlight other injus-
tices they feel have been overshadowed by the Holocaust, acts as an additional
motivation.⁵²
But the most potent and widespread form of Holocaust denial today is
undoubtedly to be found in the Middle East.⁵³ Arab and Muslim Judeophobes
have annexed the symbols and expressions of European antisemitism, including
Holocaust denial, as an integral part of their war against Israel.⁵⁴ In recent years,

50 See, for example, the full-page advertisement published in Student Life (Washington
University, St. Louis), 18 Feb. 1992. Written by Bradley R. Smith, it is entitled “The Holocaust
Controversy: The Case for Open Debate.” For the increasing use of the Internet, see ADL, Web of
Hate. Extremists Exploit the Internet (New York: 1996), 25ff.
51 For a probing analysis of the links between Arab anti-Zionist and antisemitic demonology,
the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Holocaust “revisionism,” see Pierre-André Taguieff, Les
Protocoles des Sages de Sion. Faux et Usages d’un Faux (Paris 1992), 295–363.
52 On Auschwitz and the Third World, see the discussion in Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of
Memory, 126–36.
53 Goetz Nordbruch, The Socio-Historical Background of Holocaust Denial in Arab Countries,
ACTA no. 17 (Jerusalem: Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism,
Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2001); see also Pierre-André Taguieff, La Judéophobie des
Modernes. Des Lumières au Jihad mondial (Paris 2008); Robert S. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession:
From Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York: Random House, 2010).
54 See Ibrahim Alloush, director of the Free Arab Voice website http://freearabvoice.org He
told the JHR (May–June 2001) that the Arab world was a fertile ground for “revisionist seeds.”
20 Robert Solomon Wistrich

this has become one of the central planks of Muslim Arab antisemitism.⁵⁵ One
finds a growing readiness among Muslims to believe that the Jews consciously
invented the “Auschwitz lie,” the “hoax” of their own extermination, as part of
a diabolical plan to overwhelm Islam and achieve world domination. In this
super-Machiavellian scenario, the satanic archetype of the conspiratorial Jew—
author and beneficiary of the greatest “myth” of the 20th century—has achieved a
gruesome and novel apotheosis.
One of the attractions of Holocaust denial to Arab Judeophobes lies in what
they believe to be its radical challenge to the moral foundations of the Israeli
State. Palestinian Arab leaders and intellectuals are particularly prominent in
this endeavor. Thus, Palestinian Hamas leader Khalid Mash’al, appearing on
Al-Jazeera TV on 16 July 2007 wished “to make it clear to the West and the German
people” that they were being “blackmailed because of what Nazism did to the
Zionists, or to the Jews.” For Mash’al, it was self-evident “that what Israel did to
the Palestinian people is many times worse than what Nazism did to the Jews,
and there is exaggeration, which has become obsolete, regarding the issue of the
Holocaust.” This is evidently what motivated Mahmoud Abbas (better known as
Abu Mazen), the chief PLO architect of the Oslo peace accords and head of the
Palestinian Authority. In 1984 he authored a work entitled The Other Side: The
Secret Relationship between Nazism and the Zionist Movement that accused Israel
of deliberately inflating the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust. He openly
questioned whether gas chambers were really used for extermination. Abu Mazen
bluntly suggested that the number of Jewish victims of the Shoah was “even fewer
than one million.”⁵⁶ But Abu Mazen is a “moderate” compared to the former
Moroccan army officer, Ahmed Rami, who in the 1980s began to develop his own
fully-fledged Holocaust denial campaign from Stockholm, where he founded
Radio Islam. Under the cover of “anti-Zionism” and of defending the Palestinian
cause, Rami called for “a new Hitler” who would rally the West and Islam against
the cancer of “Jewish power,” and free it forever from the mendacious yoke of
“Talmudism” and the “Holocaust industry.”⁵⁷

55 Eliahu Salpeter, ´Anti-Semitism among the Arabs,” Haaretz, 9 Feb. 2000.

56 See ADL, Holocaust Denial in the Middle East. The Latest Anti-Israel Propaganda Theme
(New York 2001), 5–6. Abu Mazen never retracted his Holocaust denial book despite a request
to do so from the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. He told the Israeli newspaper Maariv
that he wrote the work at a time when the PLO was “at war with Israel.” After Oslo, he claimed,
he would not have made such remarks.
57 See Per Ahlmark, “Reflections on Combating Anti-Semitism,” in The Rising Tide of Anti-
Semitism, edited by Yaffa Zilbershats (Givat Shmuel: Bar Ilan University, 1993), 59–66. Mr
Ahlmark, who co-founded the Swedish Committee against Anti-Semitism, has called Rami’s
 Introduction: Lying about the Holocaust 21

In Iran, too, Holocaust denial spread since the early 1980s, alongside Stürm-
er-like caricatures of the “Talmudic Jew,” the obsessive promotion of the Proto-
cols of the Elders of Zion, and repeated calls to eradicate the Zionist “cancer” from
the planet.⁵⁸ It was a logical step for militant Khomeini-style radicalism which
since 1979 had totally demonized Zionism, seeing it as a uniquely malevolent
and insidious 20th-century reincarnation of the “subversive and cunning spirit of
Judaism.”⁵⁹ Hence, it is no surprise to find the present-day leader of Iran, Ayatol-
lah Ali Khamenei proclaiming to his people:

There is evidence which shows that Zionists had close relations with German Nazis and
exaggerated statistics on Jewish killings. There is even evidence on hand that a large
number of non-Jewish hooligans and thugs of Eastern Europe were forced to emigrate to
Palestine as Jews...to install in the heart of the Islamic world an anti-Islamic State under the
guise of supporting the victims of racism....⁶⁰

Iranian President Ahmadinejad has escalated this negationism to a new level of

brazenness by repeatedly attacking the Holocaust since 2005 as a “myth” or as
“Zionist propaganda.” Many Iranian journalists, taking their cue from him, have
repeated that the “Zionist lobby” uses the Holocaust “as a club with which to beat
and extort the West.”
In December 2006, Iran even hosted a much-publicized conference of the
world’s best-known Holocaust deniers. The Iranian Foreign Minister, Manouchehr
Mottaki, opened the proceedings, stating that “If the official version of the Holo-
caust is thrown in doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown in
doubt.” All the participants questioned whether the Holocaust had taken place,
trivialized it and insisted that the event had been grossly manipulated to serve
Israel’s financial and political interests.

Holocaust denial statements “the most vicious anti-Jewish campaign in Europe since the
Third Reich.” Rami has been prosecuted in Swedish courts on three occasions. He was again
convicted and fined in October 2000.
58 See Imam (March1984 and May 1984)—a publication of the Iranian Embassy in London;
also n.a., The Imam against Zionism (n.p.: Ministry of Islamic Guidance, Islamic Republic
of Iran, 1983) for the Ayatollah Khomeini’s malevolent view of Israel. See Emmanuel Sivan,
‘Islamic Fundamentalism, Antisemitism, and Anti-Zionism,” in Anti-Zionism and Antisemitism in
the Contemporary World, edited by Robert S. Wistrich (London 1990) 74–84.
59 Olivier Carré, L’Utopie Islamique dan l’Orient Arabe (Paris 1991), 195–201; Robert S.
Wistrich, “The Antisemitic Ideology in the Contemporary Islamic World,” in Rising Tide, 67–74.
60 Jerusalem Post, 25 Apr. 2001. A year earlier, a conservative Iranian newspaper, the Tehran
Times, had insisted in an editorial that the Holocaust was “one of the greatest frauds of the
20th century.” This prompted a complaint by the British MP Louise Ellman to the Iranian
ambassador in London: Agence France-Presse, 14 May 2000.
22 Robert Solomon Wistrich

The Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, had adopted this line at least six
years earlier, telling the New York Times:

[W]e believe the number of six million is exaggerated. The Jews are using this issue, in many
ways, also to blackmail the Germans financially.... The Holocaust is protecting Israel.⁶¹

Other Palestinians have become explicitly “revisionist” in their perceptions of

the Holocaust. Hassan al-Agha, professor at the Islamic University in Gaza City,
declared on a PA cultural affairs television program in 1997:

[T]he Jews view it [the Holocaust] as a profitable activity so they inflate the number of
victims all the time. In another ten years, it do not know what number they will reach.... As
you know, when it comes to economics and investments, the Jews have been very experi-
enced even since the days of The Merchant of Venice.⁶²

Seif Ali al-Jarwan, writing a year later in the Palestinian newspaper, Al Hayat
al-Jadeeda, also invoked the shadow of Shylock, representing “the image of the
greedy, cunning, evil, and despised Jews” who succeeded in brainwashing Amer-
ican and European public opinion:

They concocted horrible stories of gas chambers which Hitler, they claimed, used to burn
them alive. The press overflowed with pictures of Jews being gunned down...or being
pushed into gas chambers.... The truth is that such persecution was a malicious fabrication
by the Jews.⁶³

Another example of this popular genre can be found in an article by the editor of
Tishreen (Syria’s leading daily). He accused the Zionists of cynically inflating the
Holocaust “to astronomic proportions” in order to “deceive international public
opinion, win its empathy and blackmail it....” Israel and the Jewish organizations,
he wrote, encourage “their distorted version of history” in order to squeeze ever
more funds from Germany and other European states in restitution payments. But
they also use the Holocaust “as a sword hanging over the necks of all who oppose

61 New York Times, 26 Mar. 2000. Sabri added: “It’s certainly not our fault if Hitler hated the
Jews. Weren’t they pretty much hated everywhere?”
62 Quoted in ADL, Holocaust Denial in the Middle East, 12.
63 Al Hayat al-Jadeeda, “Jewish Control of the World Media” (trans. by MEMRI), 2 July 1998. A
crossword puzzle in the same Palestinian newspaper, 18 Feb. 1999 asked readers to guess the
name of the “Jewish center for eternalizing the Holocaust and its lies.” The correct answer was
“Yad Vashem”—the official Israeli Holocaust memorial and research center in Jerusalem.
 Introduction: Lying about the Holocaust 23

Zionism.”⁶⁴ This Zionist effort to paralyze human memory and critical discussion
was, however, bound to fail:

Israel, that presents itself as the heir of Holocaust victims, has committed and still commits
much more terrible crimes than those committed by the Nazis. The Nazis did not expel a
whole nation nor bury people and prisoners alive, as the Zionists did.⁶⁵

The European “revisionist” most frequently mentioned as a source for Arab Holo-
caust deniers has been the French left-wing intellectual (and convert to Islam)
Roger Garaudy. Indeed, the trial and conviction of Garaudy in France in 1998 for
“négationisme” made him a hero in much of the Middle East.⁶⁶ Among his admir-
ers was the former president of Iran, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who in a
sermon on Tehran Radio, declared himself fully convinced that “Hitler had only
killed 20,000 Jews and not six million,” adding that “Garaudy’s crime derives
from the doubt he cast on Zionist propaganda.”⁶⁷
Rafsanjani is the same “moderate” cleric who proclaimed on “Jerusalem Day”
in Iran that “one atomic bomb would wipe out Israel without a trace,” while the
Islamic world would only be damaged rather than destroyed by Israeli nuclear
retaliation.⁶⁸ In the Iranian case, Holocaust denial is openly linked to extreme
anti-Zionism, antisemitism, and terrorism driven by the cult of jihad which seeks
the eradication of the “tumor called Israel.” This combination is potentially all
the more lethal in the light of Iran’s frantic efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. It
is characteristic of this fanatical mind-set that the real Nazi Holocaust inflicted
upon the Jews should be so strenuously denied by those that would repeat it.⁶⁹
The Garaudy Affair exposed over ten years ago the scale and vitality of Holo-
caust denial in the Arab world. Arabic translations of Garaudy’s work became

64 Muhammad Kheir al-Wadi, “The Plague of the Third Millennium,” Tishreen, 31 Jan. 2000.
65 Ibid.
66 Al-Ahram, 14 Mar. 1998, defended Garaudy by arguing inter alia that there was “no trace
of the gas chambers” which were supposed to have existed in Germany. In point of fact, there
were no gas chambers erected in Germany itself—the death camps were primarily located in
Poland.
67 ADL, Holocaust Denial in the Middle East, 8–9.
68 The remarks were made at Friday prayers held at the University of Tehran on Dec. 15, 2001
and widely reported in the world press. A day earlier on Iranian TV, Rafsanjani stated: “The
establishment of the State of Israel is the worst event in history. The Jews living in Israel will
have to migrate once more.”
69 It is no accident that European Holocaust deniers like the Austrian engineer, Wolfgang
Fröhlich, and the Swiss Jürgen Graf, are welcomed and resident in Iran. See ADL, Holocaust
Denial in the Middle East, 7–8.
24 Robert Solomon Wistrich

best-sellers in many Middle Eastern countries, though in France he was convicted

of inciting racial hatred.⁷⁰ Some Arab professionals eagerly offered their ser-
vices to help Garaudy. The binding ideological cement behind this outpouring
of solidarity was a Protocols-style antisemitism which branded the Holocaust as
a Zionist invention. Hence the favorable reaction to Garaudy’s thesis by so many
Arab newspapers and magazines or by prominent clerics like Sheikh Muhammad
al-Tantawi, politicians like the late Rafiq Hariri, or Egyptian intellectuals such as
Mohammed Hassanin Haikal.⁷¹
Palestinian intellectuals, clerics, and legislators have also displayed great
reluctance to incorporate any aspect of the Shoah into their teaching curricula,
evidently fearing that it might strengthen Zionist claims to Palestine.⁷² Hatem
Abd al-Qadar, a Hamas leader, explained in an internal Palestinian debate that
such instruction would represent “a great danger for the formation of a Palestin-
ian consciousness.” The Holocaust was a threat to Palestinian political dreams
and religious aspirations. It could undermine the promise by Allah that the whole
of Palestine was a sacred possession of the Arabs. Other Palestinian intellectuals
invoke “doubts” about the “veracity” of the Shoah in the West, or call for a more
concentrated focus on Zionist “terror,” “cruelty,” and “massacres” of Palestin-
ians; or they insisted that any reference to Jewish victims of the Holocaust must
be minimized, if not excluded.⁷³
According to the Palestinian intellectual Abdallah Horani, Israel and the
Zionists should not be offered Palestinian assistance to propagate their “lies” and
their “false history” of the Shoah. The Holocaust is thereby reduced to an Ameri-
can-Israeli plot to efface Palestinian national memory in favor of the globalizing
“culture of peace” and to prepare the ground for the ideological-cultural penetra-
tion of Palestine by the West. The head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza,

70 Roger Garaudy, Les Mythes Fondateurs de la politique israélienne (Paris 1995). A former
Catholic, then a Communist, Garaudy became a Muslim in 1982 and married a Jerusalem-born
Palestinian woman. On the echoes in France, see Pierre-André Taguieff, “L’Abbé Pierre et Roger
Garaudy. Négationisme, Antijudaïsme, Antisionisme,” Esprit, no. 8–9 (1996): 215; Valérie
Igounet, Histoire du Négationisme en France (Paris 2000), 472–83.
71 Mouna Naim in Le Monde, 1 Mar. 1998.
72 MEMRI Report, 20 Feb. 2001.
73 Al-Risala (Gaza), 13 Apr. 2000. In Al-Risala, 21 Aug. 2003, Abdelaziz al-Rantisi—then
the second most important leader of the Hamas—insisted that the Zionists had invented
and diffused the “Holocaust lie” to divert attention from their wicked crimes against the
Palestinians. I heard him say something similar in Gaza in May 2003, when we interviewed him
for a British Television Channel Four documentary, “Blaming the Jews,” for which I acted as the
chief historical advisor.
 Introduction: Lying about the Holocaust 25

Sheikh Nafez Azzam, summed up in cosmic theological language this perverse

form of Holocaust denial: “To teach the Shoah in Palestinian schools contradicts
the order of the universe.”⁷⁴
Since the 1990s, Holocaust denial has indeed become a much broader and
widespread phenomenon throughout the Middle East. After 2000, one can find
increasing numbers of high-ranking Iranian, Syrian, Palestinian, Hamas and
Hizbollah officials making Holocaust denial statements.⁷⁵ In the Egyptian, Jor-
danian, and Saudi media, where antisemitism is rampant, negationist rhetoric
concerning the wartime massacres of European Jews has become a very common
theme.
Holocaust denial is a particularly malevolent form of racist incitement—the
most up-to-date rationalization for hating Jews, thinly disguised under the mask
of revising history. Not for nothing have the deniers been called assassins of
memory, fanatics engaged in a new kind of symbolic genocide against the Jewish
people. Where the mobs once cried “Death to the Jews,” the deniers now cynically
proclaim that “the Jews never died” and “this truth will make you free.” Beyond
their antisemitic assault on Jewish memory, there is an even more fundamental
negation of the basic premises of enlightenment itself, an implicit leveling of all
values, and the nihilistic destruction of historical reality.

74 Al-Istiqlal, 20 Apr. 2000.

75 Meir Litvak and Esther Webman, From Empathy to Denial. Arab Responses to the Holocaust
(London 2009).
Michael Shafir
Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist
Eastern Europe¹
In post-Communist East Central Europe today, ideologies and politicians compete
in a relatively free political market; there is no longer one history but several. The
literati are also relatively free to “offer” their vision of past, present, and future.
Attitudes towards the Holocaust do not, of course, determine the region’s outlook.
But insofar as facing collective responsibility is part of any “democratic game,”
there is an indirect influence on its politics. In post-Communist East Central
Europe, there are still suspicions of an intended “collective incrimination.” There
is, in fact, nothing specifically “East-Central European” about that. However,
what is specific about the region is its former Communist legacy. And this collec-
tive legacy partly facilitates, partly explains, and rationalizes Holocaust denial
and its “comparative trivialization.”
In a book on contemporary Slovakia, Shari J. Cohen forged the concept of
the “state-organized forgetting of history” to describe the former Slovak Commu-
nist regime’s Orwellian manipulation of the historical record to serve its politi-
cal purposes.² For reasons that need not preoccupy us in this context, I disagree
with Cohen’s generalization, among other reasons because “forgetting” history
implies obliteration rather than manipulation. I believe Nancy Whittier Heer’s
1971 study on Communist history-manipulation remains to this day as relevant as
it was when its focus-object (the Soviet Union) was still with us.³ But “state-or-
ganized forgetting” is fully applicable when it comes to the East Central Euro-
pean Communist regimes’ “de-Judaization” of the atrocities perpetrated by the
Nazis and/or their local emulators or official allies, as amply demonstrated by
contributors to a volume edited by Randolph L. Braham after the demise of those
regimes.⁴ This makes the task of Holocaust negationists easier, and the receptiv-
ity to “Holocaust trivialization” arguments higher than it would otherwise be in
the Western parts of the continent, where the phenomenon of organized forget-

1 I would like to acknowledge the support of the J. and O. Winter Fund of the Graduate Center of
the City University of New York for research conducted in connection with this project.
2 Cohen, Shari J., Politics without a Past. The Absence of History in Poscommunist Nationalism
(Durham, N.C. 1999), 85–118.
3 Nancy Whittier Heer, Politics and History in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Mass. 1971).
4 Randolph L. Braham, ed., Anti-Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in
Postcommunist Eastern Europe (New York 1994).
28 Michael Shafir

ting has been by no means absent; but where, for its legacy to be challenged, it
took a generational change, rather than a change of regime.⁵
Except for the very first postwar years, Soviet historiography and its imposed
model strove to both “nationalize” and to “internationalize” the Holocaust.
Nationalization amounted to transforming Jewish victims into local victims,
while internationalization derived from those regimes’ ideologically-determined
“definition” of Fascism. In an essay written in 1985, French historian Pierre Vidal-
Naquet noted that the History of the Great Patriotic War by Boris Tepulchowski,
while mentioning the gas chambers at Auschwitz, Majdanek, and Treblinka, never
indicated that these had been put in place mainly to serve the purpose of the Jews’
physical elimination; instead, Tepulchowski wrote that six million “Polish citi-
zens” had been murdered by the Nazis. As for the extermination of Jews on Soviet
territory proper, it was covered in just two lines.⁶ Thanks to the poet, Evgenii Yev-
tushenko, the case of Babi Yar, where Soviet authorities constantly sought to blur
the record of the victims’ Jewish identity, acquired world notoriety. When in 1961,
Yevtushenko bewailed the fact that “no monument stands over Babi Yar,” little
did he know that “no monument” was better than “any monument.” The one
finally erected in 1976 on the site of the massacre specified that between 1941 and
1943, the Germans had executed there “over 100,000 citizens of Kiev and prison-
ers of war.” There was no trace here of specific Jewish suffering.⁷
Similarly, the 1947 Polish parliament’s decision to set up a memorial at Aus-
chwitz described the site as one where “Poles and citizens of other nationalities
fought and died a martyr’s death.” Twenty years later, a monument was erected
at the site, carrying inscriptions in nineteen languages, including Yiddish,
telling visitors that “Four million people suffered and died here at the hands of
the Nazi murderers between 1940 and 1945” (a gross exaggeration). Jews were
appended to the long list of “other nationalities” that had “suffered” at the hands
of the German perpetrators, and, as Michael C. Steinlauf ironically observes,
that list was “alphabetically and therefore democratically” ordered, with Żydzi
coming last. It was only after the fall of Communism that the inscription would

5 See Henri Rousso, Le Syndrome de Vichy, de 1944 à nos jours (Paris 1990), 12; Tony Judt,
“The Past Is Another Country: Myth and Memory in Postwar Europe,” in In The Politics of
Retribution in Europe: World War II and Its Aftermath, eds. István Deák, Jan T. Gross, and Tony
Judt (Princeton 2000), 293–323.
6 Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Assassins of Memory: Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust (New York
1992), 94.
7 William Korey, “Anti-Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in the USSR/CIS,” in Anti-
Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Eastern Europe, ed. Randolph L.
Braham. (New York 1994), 207–24.
 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 29

be changed, to read “Let this place remain for eternity as a cry of despair and a
warning to humanity. About one and a half million men, women, children and
infants, mainly Jews from different countries of Europe, were murdered here. The
world was silent.”⁸
Hungary was no different. Under Stalinism, “the Holocaust was virtually
sunk into the Orwellian black hole of history.”⁹ As István Deák puts it, “World
War II was officially remembered as the era when ‘communists and other pro-
gressive elements’ had struggled against, or became the victims of, ‘Hitlerite and
Horthyite fascism.’ Somehow, there seemed to have been no Jews among these
heroes and victims; instead, all were ‘anti-fascist Hungarians.’” ¹⁰
Failure to deal with the Jewish dimension of the Holocaust can also be traced
to the general failure of Communist regimes to provide a viable definition of “Fas-
cism”—a term under which all the radical Right European regimes in the interwar
period were misleadingly grouped together. Up to the late 1960s and early 1970s,
the universally-accepted and imposed definition of Fascism was that provided by
Georgi Dimitroff in his 1935 Comintern report, which had Fascist regimes being
little else than “the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chau-
vinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital.”¹¹ That was “explaining
Fascism away,” by carefully avoiding revelation of the overarching support that
Italian Fascism, Nazism, and other radical authoritarian forms of government
had enjoyed among all social classes.¹² But its advantage, from the Marxist per-
spective, rested in enabling the ruling parties to present themselves as having
been the “vanguard” of popular democratic resistance in a population allegedly
largely opposed to those regimes. The revolutionary character of generic Fascism
could thus be buried in ideological jargon, for after Lenin, the “revolution” was
no less monopolized than was the actual Communist hold on power. Fascism
could not, by definition, be anything else than “counter-revolutionary.”

8 Michael C. Steinlauf, “Poland,” in The World Reacts to the Holocaust, ed. D. S. Wyman
(Baltimore 1996), 81–155, p. 145.
9 Randolph L. Braham, “Assault on Historical Memory: Hungarian Nationalists and the
Holocaust,” in Hungary and the Holocaust: Confrontation with the Past. Symposium
Proceedings. Washington, D.C. 2001.
10 István Deák, “Anti-Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in Hungary,” in Anti-
Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Eastern Europe, ed. R. L.
Braham.( New York 1994), 99–124, p. 111.
11 Georgi Dimitroff, The United Front Against War and Fascism: Report to the Seventh World
Congress of the Communist International 1935 (New York 1974), 7.
12 A. J. Gregor, Interpretations of Fascism (New Brunswick, N.J. 1997), 128–78.
30 Michael Shafir

This categorization left its mark, and not only on Communist historians.
Milan S. Ďurica, a Slovak scholar teaching history at a theological faculty, for
example, in 1992 defended the record of the Nazi-allied Jozef Tiso regime, empha-
sizing that labeling it Fascist would be wrong. There never was sufficient autoch-
thonous Slovak capital in the “Parish Republic,” it being largely concentrated
in Hungarian-Jewish-German hands, he wrote; and Fascism, according Ďurica is
“the reign of terror by financial capital, the most reactionary imperialistic move-
ment of the chauvinist upper bourgeoisie allied with nationalism.”¹³
As A. James Gregor has argued, a “perfectly plausible case can be made that
Stalinism was the ideology of a developmental national socialism, the ‘socialism’
of an economically backward nation. As such, it shared more than superficial
similarities with the Fascism of Mussolini.”¹⁴ As I pointed out elsewhere, Stalin’s
“socialism in one country” was the first ideologically-formulated justification of
what would eventually become known as “National Communism.”¹⁵ This, in fact,
is also the core argument of a book published by Mikhail Agursky, a Soviet-time
dissident who emigrated to Israel in the 1970s.¹⁶ It is in this spirit that Vera Tolz
concluded that in Russia “Nationalism took the form of National Bolshevism...,
the most extreme manifestation of which was Iosif Stalin’s highly anti-Semitic
campaign against cosmopolitanism in the late 1940s and early 1950s.”¹⁷
Nor was National Communism confined to the former Soviet Union’s borders.
“Objectively speaking” (as Stalin would have put it), it became the dominant doc-
trine adopted against Soviet domination. Tito’s “heresy,” as we know from Zbig-
niew Brzezinski, had National Communism at its core, as did the Hungarian rev-
olution of 1956 (at least in its early stages), and the return to power in that same
year of Władisław Gomułka in Poland.¹⁸ Eventually, that latter event would beget
the phenomenon of General Mieczysław Moczar’s “Endo-Communism,” combin-
ing “the assimilation of ideas with direct linkage to the prewar Endecja” with
“proletarian rhetoric”—producing a “peculiar marriage of authoritarian Commu-

13 Cited in Pavol Mešťan, Anti-Semitism in Slovak Politics (1989–1999) (Bratislava 2000),

93–94.
14 A. James Gregor, The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century (New
Haven 2000), 42, 128–65.
15 Michael Shafir, “Reds, Pinks, Blacks and Blues: Radical Politics in Post-Communist East
Central Europe,” Studia politica 1, no. 2 (2001): 397–446, p. 400–401.
16 Mikhail Agursky, The Third Rome: National Bolshevism in the USSR (Boulder, Colo.:
Westview, 1987).
17 Vera Tolz, “The Radical-Right in Post-Communist Russian Politics,” in The Revival of Right-
Wing Extremism in the Nineties, ed. P. H. Merkl and L. Weinberg (London 1997), 177–202, p. 179.
18 Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict (Cambridge, Mass. 1960).
 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 31

nism and chauvinist nationalist tendencies,” among which antisemitism figured

prominently.¹⁹
But in reality, the marriage was hardly “peculiar.” Under Nicolae Ceauşescu,
Romania would not only undergo a similar process, but would by far overtake
Poland, with the world outlook of the interwar Fascist Iron Guard encoded in all
but official acknowledgment in party documents, and reflected in party-super-
vised historiography. With the exception of Czechoslovakia (or rather its Czech
part), no country in East Central Europe remained unaffected by “the plague.”
Enver Hoxha’s Albania and Ceauşescu’s Romania (joined in the 1970s by Bulgar-
ia’s “xenophobic communism”) stood out in their attempts to substitute nation-
alist for ideological legitimacy.²⁰ As one scholar put it, “national communism,
though it may seem to be a political oxymoron, became increasingly the norm
by the 1970s and certainly by the 1980s as the Marxist-Leninist regimes sought to
hold on to power in face of collapsing political legitimacy.”²¹
A large part of the post-Communist East Central European political spectrum
is still occupied by parties of “radical continuity” and—to a lesser, but not incon-
siderable—extent by parties of “radical return.” The former are the offspring of
National Communism liberated from its earlier Communist ideological straight-
jacket, while the latter advocate a return to the values embraced by the interwar
radical Right.²² All radical continuity formations are “successor parties” of the
former Communist rulers, which does not necessarily imply that all successor
parties are radical continuity formations. However, what all successor parties
share is access to what Michael Waller calls “organizational continuity,” includ-
ing, above all, access to material resources.²³ Neither radical return formations
nor the conservative or neo-conservative formations which identify themselves
with historically-reborn mainstream parties, benefit from such access. Reject-
ing, as they do, continuity with Communism, they must replace it with other

19 Steinlauf, “Poland,” 115.

20 See Michael Shafir, “Xenophobic Communism: The Case of Bulgaria and Romania,” The
World Today 45, no. 12 (1989): 208–12; Vladimir Tismaneanu, “The Ambiguity of Romanian
National Communism,” Telos 60 (1984): 65–79; idem, “The Tragicomedy of Romanian
Communism,” East European Politics and Society 3, no. 2 (1989): 329–76; Mary Ellen Fischer,
Nicolae Ceausescu: A Study in Political Leadership (Boulder, Colo. 1989).
21 Aurel Braun, “Hungary From “Goulash Communism” to Pluralistic Democracy,” in The
Extreme Right: Freedom and Security at Risk, ed. A. Braun and S. Scheinberg, (Boulder, Colo.
1997), 201–19.
22 See Shafir, “Reds, Pinks, Blacks and Blues.”
23 Michael Waller, “Adaptation of the Former Communist Parties of East-Central Europe: A Case
of Social-Democratization?” Party Politics 1, no. 4 (1995): 473–90, p. 481–82.
32 Michael Shafir

resources, among which “historic continuity” figures more prominently than it

does in the case of the successor parties. At first sight, this has little to do with
Holocaust denial and with its comparative trivialization. On closer scrutiny,
however, both radical return and conservative formations, or intellectuals identi-
fying with them, are often found to be part of the Holocaust-denying landscape.
In other words, the legacy of state-organized forgetting and National Com-
munism extends far beyond those who under the former regime identified with
its values and continue to do so in the post-Communist setting. The partisans
of radical return (from whom most outright negationists stem) are perhaps the
fiercest in opposing the legacy of Communism. However, the former regime has
made their discourse more persuasive than might otherwise have been the case
by having failed to address the issue of the Holocaust, or (as will be seen) by
deflecting the blame for its perpetration onto either the Germans or onto a com-
bination between them and the traditional “historic enemy.” This, for example,
was the case of Romania, where, under Ceauşescu, references to Jewish extermi-
nation were singularly confined to Hungarian-occupied northern Transylvania,
with no mention whatever being made of the extermination of Jews in Transn-
istria under Marshal Ion Antonescu’s regime, and/or solely attributed there to
the Germans.²⁴ Why then, should Iron Guard leader Corneliu Zelea Codreanu and
Antonescu, Admiral Miklós Horthy and Arrow Cross leader Ferenc Szálasi, Pres-
ident Tiso or Croat Ustasha leader Ante Pavelić not reemerge as model figures of
national heroes, whose only fault rests in their having supported or allied them-
selves with those who were fighting Communism and/or the traditional enemy of
their nation?
What is more, with Antonescu, Szálasi, and Tiso having been executed as war
criminals (or Codreanu having been assassinated at the orders of King Carol II in
1938), they may fit very well into the natural post-Communist search for replacing
manipulated state-organized martyrdom on the altar of proletarian internation-
alism with martyrdom in the name of national, anti-Communist values. Ľudovit
Pavlo, chairman of the Slovak League of America and a partisan of Tiso’s reha-
bilitation, was most genuine in giving vent to this quest for martyr-hero models.
In 1996, in an article included in a volume of collected papers published in
Bratislava, Pavlo wrote quite bluntly: “I was pleased that Tiso died a martyr’s

24 Victor Eskenasy, “The Holocaust and Romanian Historiography: Communist and Neo-
Communist Revisionism,” in The Tragedy of Romanian Jewry, ed. R. L. Braham (New York
1994), 173–236, pp. 191, 196; Radu Ioanid, “Anti-Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust
in Postcommunist Romania,” in Anti-Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in
Postcommunist Eastern Europe, ed. Randolph L. Braham (New York 1994), 82–159.
 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 33

death because we gained a saint and a hero.... I was afraid [after the war] that
Tiso would be sentenced to life imprisonment because, with the passage of time,
he would probably had fallen into oblivion.” Tiso-defender Gabriel Hoffmann,
in a book he edited together with his brother Karel in 1994, concluded, “after the
study of hundreds of documents,” that all accusations leveled at Tiso were lies
and that he was “not a criminal, but a saint.” The Vatican, Hoffmann wrote, will
one day still canonize Tiso.²⁵
Tiso, who was a Catholic priest, finds himself in the company of laymen
Codreanu and Antonescu. In 1993, when an Iron Guard “inheritor party” calling
itself New Christian Romania was set up in Bucharest, participants in its founding
congress demanded that Codreanu be canonized; the same demand was made in
1998 by a Cluj-based foundation of radical return leanings.²⁶ In 2001, a partici-
pant in a symposium marking the tenth anniversary of the setting up of Roma-
nia’s most conclusive exemplification of a radical continuity party—the Greater
Romania Party (PRM)—proposed that Antonescu be canonized by the Romanian
Orthodox Church.²⁷
“Mainstream” party leaders face a double dilemma when coming to forge
what Hungarian sociologist András Kovács termed in Hungary’s case “creating
an identity on a symbolic level.” I believe this insight can be generalized beyond
Hungarian borders. Democratic parties can either opt for placing themselves
somewhere along the Western political spectrum or express a relationship with
certain emblematic periods, events or individuals in the country’s own history.
Formations whose option is mainly introvert, fight the battle among themselves
“for the appropriation of history” in which they attempt to demonstrate historical
tradition and continuity. But a second dilemma emerges once the introvert option
has been made, namely whether (and to what extent) to distance themselves or
not from the less seemly aspects of remote or immediate history. Opting for dis-
tancing themselves from figures such as those mentioned above is in many cases
tantamount to renouncing historic legitimacy. For what historic legitimacy can
one claim if, as a Slovak or a Croat politician, one casts aside any continuity with
the only time when an independent Slovak or Croat state has existed? And while
claiming “anti-Communist historic legitimacy” is possible in the case of historic
parties or neo-conservative formations in Hungary or Romania, it is not easy to

25 Cited in Mešťan, Anti-Semitism in Slovak Politics, 159, 164.

26 See România mare, 29 Jan. 1993.
27 William Totok, “Sacrificarea lui Antonescu pe altarul diplomaţiei,” Parts 1–4, Observator
cultural (Bucharest) 74 (24–30 July 2001): 75; (31 July–6 Aug. 2001): 76; (7–13 Aug. 2001); 77;
(14–20 Aug. 2001).
34 Michael Shafir

do so when Antonescu and Horthy are largely perceived as the embodiment of

anti-Communist postures.
Even in the case of Poland or the Czech Republic (which, unlike Hitler’s allies
were themselves victims of aggression and decimation), the Holocaust poses the
problem of “competitive martyrdom”—that of one’s own nation versus that of
the Jews. In the Polish case, moreover, politicians, intellectuals, and indeed, the
Catholic Church, must cope with a legacy of non-institutionalized, large-scale
popular antisemitism, as well as with that of the partly-institutionalized antisem-
itism of formations such as the Endecja. Under these circumstances, it is quite
tempting to slide into one shade or another of comparative trivialization.

Holocaust Negation

Outright negation of the Holocaust is rare, but not insignificant. In general, it is

supported and inspired by the aged, extreme nationalist exiled community, many
members of which are linked with exile associations. These people have access to
Western negationist literature and some go as far as to participate themselves in
the negationist drive. The Western inspiration is, however, not always acknowl-
edged. Viewed from this perspective, one could possibly speak of “honest” and
“dishonest” negationists. Politicians usually belong to the latter category. A case
in point is Stanislav Pánis, the former leader of the Slovak National Unity Party
and later a deputy representing the Slovak National Party in the Czechoslovak
Federal Assembly.²⁸ In an interview with Norwegian television in 1992, Pánis
said it would have been “technically impossible” for the Nazis to exterminate six
million Jews in camps—a clear echo of French negationist Robert Faurisson’s con-
tentions. Pánis also claimed that Auschwitz was nothing but an “invention” of
the Jews to make possible the flow of compensation to Israel. His political career
did not suffer as a result of these statements, and in the late 1990s, he even served
as a Deputy Culture Minister.²⁹

28 Fred Hahn, “Anti-Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in Postcommunist

Czechoslovakia (The Czech Republic),” in Anti-Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in
Postcommunist Eastern Europe, ed. Randolph L. Braham (New York 1994), 71; Shari J. Cohen,
Politics without a Past. The Absence of History in Poscommunist Nationalism (Durham, N.C.
1999), 158; Mešťan, Anti-Semitism in Slovak Politics, 73.
29 See RFE/RL Newsline, 20 June 1997.
 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 35

In Romania, Greater Romania Party (PRM) leader Corneliu Vadim Tudor in

March 1994 professed to have “learned that English and American scientists [sic!]
are contesting the Holocaust itself, providing documentation and logical argu-
ments proving that the Germans could not gas six million Jews, this being tech-
nically and physically an impossibility.” The Holocaust, he added, was nothing
but “a Zionist scheme aimed at squeezing out from Germany about 100 billion
Deutschmarks and to terrorize for more than forty years all those who do not
acquiesce to the Jewish yoke.”³⁰ In November 2000 Tudor’s party became the sec-
ond-strongest formation in the Romanian parliament and the PRM leader made it
to a runoff with Ion Iliescu for the position of head of state.³¹
Not all Holocaust negationist politicians in East Central Europe, however,
went unpunished. In general, the less significant politically their formation
appeared to be, the greater the chance that they would eventually face some
sort of judicial accounting. The most famous case in point is perhaps that of
Poland’s Bolesław Tejkowski, leader of the neo-Fascist Polish National Common-
wealth-Polish National Party. In 1995, he was given a two-year suspended sen-
tence for insulting “the Polish authorities, the Jewish people, the Pope and the
Episcopate.” In Tejkowski’s eyes not only Poland’s entire post-Communist lead-
ership was made up of Jews and “closet-Jews,” but the Polish Pope (Karol Wojtyła)
was himself Jewish. The Holocaust, he claimed, was a Jewish conspiracy that had
made it possible for the Jews to hide their offspring in monasteries during World
War II, in order for them to be baptized and take over the Church from within.
This, he said, was how Wojtyła became a Catholic priest.³² Outlandish as this may
sound, it was nonetheless not singular. In Hungary, two other radical return pub-
lications, Hunnia Füzetek and Szent Korona, “unmasked” Cardinal Páskai as being
allegedly Jewish; and precisely the same argument was produced in Romania by

30 România mare, 4 Mar. 1994.

31 Michael Shafir, “The Greater Romania Party and the 2000 Elections in Romania: How
Obvious is the Obvious?,” Romanian Journal of Society and Politics 1, no. 2 (2001).
32 Anita J Prazmowska, “The New Right in Poland: Nationalism, Anti-Semitism and
Parliamentarianism,” in The Far Right in Western and Eastern Europe, eds. Luciano Cheles,
Ronnie Ferguson, and Michalina Vaughan (London 1995), 198–214, pp. 209–10; Thomas S.
Szayna, “The Extreme-Right Political Movements in Post-Communist Central Europe,” in The
Revival of Right-Wing Extremism in the Nineties, eds. Peter H. Merkl and Leonard Weinberg
(London 1997) 111–48, p. 121; David Ost, “The Radical Right in Poland: Rationality of the
Irrational,” in The Radical Right in Central and Eastern Europe Since 1989, ed. Sabrina P. Ramet
(University Park, Pa. 1999), 85–107, p. 96.
36 Michael Shafir

Radu Theodoru, who “revealed” that Wojtyła’s name was in fact “Katz.”³³ In other
words, the Jews are the authors of the Holocaust—an “argument” by no means
limited to the outright negationists, as we shall yet observe.
For obvious reasons, Poland is the least prone of East European nations to
outright negationism, Tejkowski’s case notwithstanding. Too many of the exter-
mination camps had been on Polish soil and negation would be to question the
largely consensual Polish martyrdom itself. And yet negationist articles began
appearing in 1994 and 1995 in Szczerbiec (The sword), the publication of the
extreme Right formation that calls itself National Revival of Poland (NOP). That
radical return party was led by Adam Gmurczyk and claims to be the reincar-
nation of the prewar violently antisemitic youth organization, National-Radical
Camp, that was outlawed in 1934. The NOP is a member of the neo-Nazi Inter-
national Third Position and Szczerbiec lists such notorious Holocaust deniers as
Derek Holland and Roberto Fiore on its editorial board. It printed several “clas-
sics” among outright deniers in the West.³⁴ The NOP, following the so-called
Western “revisionist” tactics, also established a National-Radical Institute, which
in 1997 published a volume under the title The Myth of the Holocaust, consisting
of translations from the most infamous Western Holocaust deniers. One of the
regular contributors to Szczerbiec, Maciej Przebindowski, in 1997 went so far as
to emulate his Western inspirers by claiming that “a group of researchers from
the National-Radical Institute” had conducted field work at Auschwitz-Birkenau,
concluding that the extermination in gas chambers was an impossibility.³⁵
Politicians, however, are not alone in indulging in outright Holocaust nega-
tion. The phenomenon is spread far more in publications that may or may not
have a direct party affiliation, and in journals or weeklies translating, adopting,
and embracing the argument of Western negationists. In 1999, a Polish historian,
Dariusz Ratajczak, who worked as a researcher at the recently-founded Univer-
sity of Opole, was put on trial for having published a book that espoused the
“Auschwitz lie” theory. Dangerous Topics, embracing the so-called Fred Leuch-
ter Report, claimed, among other things, that Zyklon-B gas had been used in
the camps solely for “disinfecting” purposes. Other arguments of the improp-

33 Ivan T. Berend, “Jobbra Át! [Right face]: Right-wing Trends in Post-Communist Hungary,”in
Democracy and Right-Wing Politics in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, ed. J. Held (Boulder 1993)
105–34, p. 131; George Voicu, Zeii cei ră i: Cultura conspiraţiei în România postcomunistă (The
evil gods: conspiracy culture in post-communist Romania) (Iaşi 2000), 82, 157.
34 Rafal Pankowski, “From the Lunatic Fringe to Academia: Holocaust Denial in Poland,”in
Holocaust Denial: The David Irving Trial and International Revisionism, ed. Kate Taylor (London:
Searchlight Educational Trust 2000), 79–80.
35 Ibid., 76.
 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 37

erly-called “revisionists” were also reproduced in the volume. In his defense,

Ratajczak claimed that he did not necessarily agree with the arguments of the
revisionists, but considered it necessary to make known all points of view on the
Holocaust. “My only objective,” he said, “was to present a phenomenon called
‘Holocaust Revisionism,’ without an author’s commentary.” The court found the
claim unconvincing, given Ratajczak’s own comments in the volume, but it none-
theless dismissed the case. The small number of copies (230) produced in the
book’s first print run, it said, was too “insignificant” to cause any “serious degree
of social harm,” and between the first and the second, larger print, Ratajczak had
publicly distanced himself from the revisionists.³⁶ Yet just days after the verdict
was pronounced, Ratajczak was the guest star at a political meeting organized
by the extreme Right National Party, whose active member he was. Furthermore,
his views were embraced and defended by such figures in the “respectable aca-
demic world” as Professor Ryszard Bender, who teaches history at the Catholic
University of Lublin. Though he had represented the Communist Party in parlia-
ment in the 1980s, Bender later switched allegiance to the Right and was for some
time a Senator and the chairman of the State Council on Radio and Television.³⁷
Bender accused the “Jewish lobby” of persecuting Ratajczak and went so far as
to deny that Auschwitz had been an extermination camp. He was eventually dis-
ciplined by his university and Ratajczak himself was fired from the University of
Opole. Almost instantly, he was offered a job at the Higher School of Journalism
in Warsaw.³⁸
Criminal proceedings were also initiated in Hungary against negationists
Albert Szabó and István Györkös. Szabó claimed that the Holocaust is a hoax and
that European Jews have all emigrated to America. Györkös, for his part, has had
contacts with U.S. Nazi and Austrian neo-Nazi leaders and, in his publications
denied the Holocaust had ever been perpetrated. Both are leaders of the radical
return Hungarianist Movement, an organization claiming descent from Szálasi’s
Hungarian National Socialist Party-Hungarianist Movement—the official name
of the Arrow Cross.³⁹ Szabó, leader of the Hungarian People’s Welfare Alliance
(MNSZ), has a great number of relatives in Israel, whom he visited several times—
as fellow radical Right competitor István Csurka disclosed.⁴⁰ This may explain

36 RFE/RL Newsline, 17 Nov. 1999; PAP, 7 Dec. 1999.

37 Pankowski, “From the Lunatic Fringe,” 78–79.
38 Ibid., 79–80.
39 Ruth Ellen Gruber, The Struggle of Memory: The Rehabilitation and Reevaluation of Fascist
Heroes in Europe (New York 1995), 20.
40 László Karsai, “The Radical Right in Hungary, ïn The Radical Right in Central and Eastern
Europe Since 1989, ed. Sabrina P. Ramet (University Park, Md. 1999), 133–46, p. 145.
38 Michael Shafir

why some politologists felt the need to indulge in psychiatric theorizing in this
particular case. Together with Györkös, in March 1996, a tribunal acquitted Szabó
of violating a law banning incitement to racial hatred and the use of prohibited
Nazi symbols, on grounds of constitutional provisions protecting freedom of
speech.⁴¹
In Hungary, negationist articles were quite frequently printed in the weekly
Szent Korona and in the monthly Hunnia Füzetek. The former ceased publication
in 1992, and its editor-in-chief, László Romhányi, was convicted in 1993 for various
crimes, as were several members of the weekly’s staff. In 1991 Hunnia Füzetek
carried an article by Australian-exiled Arrow Cross sympathizer Viktor Padányi,
written in the best “scientific” tradition of Holocaust denial. The article—includ-
ing the main theses of a book Padányi had published in Australia—stated that
out of the one-and-a-half million Jews acknowledged to have lost their lives in
World War II, 1.2 million had been killed by the Soviets and “just” 300,000 by the
Nazis. The latter had anyhow acted only in self-defense, because the Jews had
“been working” for the “enemy” both inside Germany and outside its borders.
The monthly’s editor-in-chief, Ferenc Kunszabó and one of its regular contribu-
tors, János Fodor, were charged in 1993 with “incitement against a community,”
but the court ruled that to convict them would be tantamount to restraining the
freedom of the press.
In Romania, translations of negationist articles were printed in both radical
continuity and radical return publications. What is more astonishing is the
fact that intellectual figures generally perceived to identify with democratic,
pro-Western postures came out in defense of negationist literature dissemination.
For example, the PRM weekly Politica serialized translations by Leonard Gavriliu
from the French periodical Annales d’histoire révisionniste in eight consecutive
issues between February and March 1995. The radical return publication of the
now defunct Movement for Romania, Mişcarea, in November 1994 published an
article by Silviu Rareş reviewing such “milestones of Holocaust contestation” as
the works of David Irving, Maurice Bardèche, Paul Rassinier, Pierre Guillaume,
Richard Harwood, Udo Walendy, and Ernst Zündel, as well as of Faurisson and
Butz. Roger Garaudy’s The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics, with its well-known
negationist tunes, was welcomed not only by the radical return monthly, Puncte
cardinale, but also by Professor Nicolae Manolescu, at that time a leading National
Liberal Party (PNL) figure, as well as by “mainstream” journalist Cristian Tudor
Popescu, editor-in-chief of one of Romania’s largest circulation dailies, Adevărul.
For Popescu, criticism of Garaudy’s works abroad amounted to nothing less than

41 OMRI Daily Digest, 5 and 11 Mar. 1996.

 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 39

questioning “freedom of thought” and the condemnation of The Founding Myths

was on par with passing sentence on Descartes.⁴²
On its outer cover, the Romanian version of Garaudy’s book carried the
author’s reactions to the protests with which the volume was met: “It is not my
fault if those who accuse me have set up a world-business specializing in selling
their grandparents’ bones.” The book had landed its author before a court of
justice in France—he was sentenced to a 120,000 Francs fine—and its Swiss
distributor came before a similar court in Switzerland. If the book’s Romanian
defenders could argue, as Manolescu did, that Garaudy did not entirely negate
the Holocaust in The Founding Myths, having only objected to “some exaggera-
tions,” the claim could no longer be made for a 1999 translation of his volume—
The Trial of Israeli Zionism: Unmasking the International Zionist Conspiracy, in
which the negationist argument is fully embraced.⁴³
No one among Romanian authors embraced more eagerly and more fully the
negationist argument than Radu Theodoru. A former air force officer, founding
member of the PRM, and for some time one of Tudor’s deputies, Theodoru was
expelled from the PRM after he quarreled with Tudor. For a brief period in 1993, he
became chairman of the extraparliamentary Party of Social Democratic Unity but
eventually dedicated himself fully to the negationist cause, occasionally combin-
ing this obsession with attacks on the country’s Hungarian minority—depicted as
being “in league” with the Jews.⁴⁴
Theodoru is an “honest negationist.” “I am the partisan of the revisionist
school headed by the French scientist [sic!] Robert Faurisson,” he wrote in 1995
in the weekly Europa. He added that Faurisson “is the victim of disgusting moral
and physical pressures, only for having questioned the existence of the gas cham-
bers.” Theodoru then proceeded to produce the list of Western negationists and
their main “demonstrations,” starting with the “Leuchter Report,” and then going
back to Léon Degrelle, the leader of the Belgian Rexist Fascist movement and his
1979 “open letter” to Pope John Paul II. In that letter, Degrelle—who served as a
volunteer in the Walonia Waffen SS unit on the Eastern front—claimed that as an
eyewitness he could testify that there had been neither gas chambers nor any

42 Cristian Tudor Popescu, “Cazul Garaudy: Libertatea gândirii taxată drept antisemitism,”
Adevărul, 12 Dec. 1996; idem, “Condamnarea lui Descartes,” Adevărul, 2 Mar. 1998.
43 See George Voicu, Teme antisemite în discursul public (Antisemitic themes in public
discourse) (Bucharest 2000), 137.
44 Michael Shafir, “Growing Political Extremism in Romania,” RFE/RL Research Report 2, no. 14
(1993): 18–25; see Radu Theodoru, Hungarianismul, astăzi: Paranoia unui focar de instabilitate
din centrul Europei (Hungarianism today: the paranoia of an instable hotbed in Central Europe)
(Bucharest 1996); idem, Urmaşii lui Attlia (Attila’s successors) (Bucharest 1999).
40 Michael Shafir

mass annihilation of Jews in Hitler’s Third Reich and in the territories occupied by
Germany. The Jews, he insisted, had been killed by American and British bomb-
ings.⁴⁵ Degrelle produced two “comparative columns” which demonstrate that
the “real genocide was that committed by the British-American bombings, by the
two American A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by the mass assassinations
in Hamburg and Dresden” and not at Auschwitz, used by “Zionist propaganda to
squeeze out of defeated Germany fabulous amounts of money.” It was “Zionist
propaganda” that had “imposed on [international] public opinion the fabulous
number of six million assassinated Jews.” According to Theodoru, however, the
“revisionist school” “demonstrates” that the number of victims packed into a
gas chamber could physically never have reached the number of gassed victims
attributed to the Nazis. As is well known, this is one of Faurisson’s main claims.
The “revisionist school” he wrote, is nothing short of “an A-bomb thrown by con-
scientious historians on the propagandistic construct put in place by the crafts-
men of the Alliance Israélite Universelle.” The “school” had “demonstrated that
at Auschwitz and the other camps no genocide by gassing had occurred.” The
“revisionists” had succeeded in raising basic questions about the “‘tribute’ paid
by postwar Germany to Israel and world Jewish organizations—from pensions to
all sorts of subventions.”⁴⁶
The article in Europa was said to be the first in a serialized new book by The-
odoru, whose title was announced as Romania, the World and the Jews. The book
itself was published in 1997, but under the title Romania as Booty, and it appar-
ently sold well enough for a second, enlarged version, to be brought out by a
different publisher in 2000, with the article in Europa serving as the volume’s
introduction.⁴⁷
But Romania as Booty by no means exhausted Theodoru’s outright nega-
tionist offensive. In a volume published in 2000, whose title was obviously of
Garaudian inspiration, he further expanded on the argument. In Zionist Nazism,
Theodoru told his readers the Holocaust has been turned into “the most prof-
itable Jewish business” that ever existed, a business that has “enriched the
so-called witnesses, who fabricated a series of aberrant exaggerations and patho-
logical descriptions of life in Nazi camps.” The managers of that “business” had
“introduced the Holocaust in school curricula, Ph.D.s were being written on the

45 Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New
York 1993), 11.
46 Radu Theodoru, “Lumea, România şi evreii (The World, Romania, and the Jews),” Europa
(supliment East-Vest) 189 (3–17 May 1995): 1, 11.
47 Radu Theodoru, România ca o pradă (Romania as booty) (Oradea 1997), 9.
 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 41

subject, writers engaged in fiction on the topic make a nice profit from it,” and
“so-called documentary movies such as [Claude Lanzmann’s] Shoah. There were
nothing but subtle or gross mystifications” alongside the holding of “so-called
scientific conferences” and articles in the mass media. This profiteering combina-
tion managed to “set in place a complex system of misinformation, of brain-wash-
ing, of psychological pressure” and “succeeded in imposing forgery as an emo-
tional reality.” The reaction of “human dignity” to this state of affairs, Theodoru
went on to write, “is called Historical Revisionism” and its courageous partisans
had been turned into “the target of Nazi Zionism, which employs against revi-
sionist historians physical terror, media lynching, judicial terror, assassination
attempts, social isolation, economic strikes.” The revisionist output “analyses
the whole Nuremberg trial, proving that it has been a trial of the revenge of the
victors over the vanquished. I myself characterize it as the trial of German Nazism
by Zionist Nazism. To be more precise, the trial staged by Judaic Nazism against
Aryan Nazism. Nothing but a scuffle among racists.”⁴⁸

Deflective Negationism

Such radical negationism generally remains on the fringe, but “deflective nega-
tionism” is far more diffuse. Rather than negating the Holocaust, it transfers the
guilt for the perpetration of crimes to members of other nations, or minimizes the
role of one’s own nation to the level of a mere “aberration.” It is self-defensive,
and particularistic rather than universal. It is possible to distinguish between
several sub-categories of deflective negation, according to its target. Restricting
perpetration of mass murder to the Germans is the easiest and perhaps most
natural form of deflective negationism. Next comes the deflection of guilt onto
allegedly insignificant aberrations, especially by “collaborators.” Last but by
no means least, guilt for the Holocaust is also deflected on the Jews themselves.
All three sub-categories involve, at the same time, a conscious or unconscious
amount of “Holocaust minimization,” such as we also find in the comparative
trivialization of the Shoah.
The Polish story is perhaps the most dramatic, for they were victims and
“bystanders” at one and the same time. The former dimension is deeply imbedded
in collective memory; the latter is often subject to deflection. As Steinlauf aptly

48 Radu Theodoru, Nazismul sionist (Zionist Nazism) (Bucharest 2000), 23–24, author’s
emphasis.
42 Michael Shafir

formulated it, the Communist-induced legacy of ignoring the Jewish dimension

of the Holocaust has meant that for decades, its meaning “had become Polish vic-
timization by the Holocaust” (author’s emphasis).⁴⁹ In addition, victimization in
the “imagined” Polish community is perhaps more pronounced than elsewhere,
undoubtedly reflecting objective historical facts.⁵⁰ When literature professor Jan
Błoński in 1987 first called on his countrymen to “stop being defensive, plead-
ing innocence” about the Holocaust and “accept our responsibility,” his call, as
expected, met with harsh reactions. For it was not easy to demolish the myth
that had transformed the genuine sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Polish tol-
erance of the Jews into one claiming that “that tradition continued uninterrupted
over the centuries.”⁵¹ “We welcomed Jews to our home, but made them live in the
basement,” Błoński wrote, adding (in an obvious reference to the Emancipation)
that “When they sought to enter the drawing room, we promised we would let
them in on the condition that they would stop being Jews, or ‘become civilized,’
as the expression went in nineteenth century Poland, but certainly not only in
Poland.” However, “When some Jews expressed willingness to follow this advice,
we started talking about a Jewish invasion.” Then came the Holocaust, when “we
lost our home and the occupiers began killing Jews on its premises. How many
of us decided that this was none of our business? There were also those (I leave
criminals out of account) who secretly were glad that Hitler solved the Jewish
‘problem’ for us.” Does this, Błoński asked, amount to “complicity in genocide?”
The definitive answer, he believed, was negative. “Why talk about genocide,
then? About complicity? My answer is this: taking part and complicity are not
the same thing. One may be associated in guilt without actually taking part in the
crime.” The Holocaust in Poland, according to Błoński, would have been “made
more difficult” on its perpetrators, were it not for the “indifference and moral
paralysis [of] the society that witnessed it.”⁵²
Błoński’s article was a landmark in the evolution of both Polish-Jewish
relations and Polish attitudes toward the Holocaust. To review that evolution is
beyond the focus of this study. But as Polish historian Dariusz Stola has noted,
by the 1990s, the debate in Poland on the Holocaust had increasingly turned into

49 Steinlauf, “Poland,” 125.

50 See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of
Nationalism (London 1991).
51 Abraham Brumberg, “Anti-Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in Postcommunist
Poland,” in Anti-Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Eastern Europe,
ed. R. L. Braham (New York 1994) 143–57, p. 144.
52 Jan Błoński, “Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto,” Yad Vashem Studies, ed. A. Weiss 19 (1988):
341–55, pp. 352–54.
 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 43

Polish-Polish debates, contrary to the previous decades, when they had been
mostly Polish-Jewish controversies. Many Poles are nowadays ready to face the
seemingly irreconcilable equation that “a victim can sometimes be a victimizer”
and that Nazi intentions towards the Poles were inhuman, but still different from
the plan of the “Final Solution” of the Jewish question.
Deflective negationism is nonetheless a tempting option. Nothing illustrated
this better than the reactions to the publication (in 2000 in Poland, in 2001 in the
West) of Jan T. Gross’s account of the July 1941 massacre of Jedwabne’s 1,600-strong
Jewish community by their Polish neighbors.⁵³ The massacre had been subjected
to confinement in the Communist “black hole of history.” Indeed, Gross’s book
does not reveal facts that were unknown in the first decade of Poland’s Commu-
nist rule—it only provides additional information on them. Neither does the book
in any way generalize Jedwabne into an accusation of overall Polish complicity
in the Nazi crimes, though Jedwabne was actually not a singular case. Four days
earlier, close to 1,000 Jews were killed by their neighbors in the nearby town of
Radziłów. Some of the Jedwabne massacre perpetrators had, in fact, been put on
trial and convicted in 1949 and in 1953, with one death sentence pronounced but
never carried out.⁵⁴ The monument put on site by the Communists in the 1960s
acknowledged the Jewish identity of the victims, but claimed that “Gestapo and
Hitlerite gendarmes burned alive 1,600 people.”⁵⁵ A similar inscription was put in
place in Radziłów, whose Jewish victims were said to have perished at the hand
of the Fascists.⁵⁶ Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of Jedwabne’s
victims were forced into a barn that was set on fire by their Polish neighbors. The
Germans were certainly present in the vicinity, but ironically, the German mili-
tary post not far from Jedwabne was the safest place for the Jews to seek refuge
in, some owing their lives—for the time being at least—to that military post.⁵⁷
There were, according to Gross, less than a dozen German soldiers in Jedwabne
when the atrocity was committed, and they did no more than take photographs
of it. According to the account of a Jewish eyewitness, the same had happened in
Radziłów, where the arrival of German soldiers saved the lives of eighteen Jews.⁵⁸

53 Jan T. Gross, Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne (Princeton,
N.J. 2001).
54 Abraham Brumberg, “Murder Most Foul: Polish Responsibility for the Massacre at
Jedwabne,” Times Literary Supplement 5109 (2 March 2001): 8–9.
55 Frank Fox, “A Skeleton in Poland’s Closet: The Jedwabne Massacre” East European Jewish
Affairs 31, no. 1 (2001): 77–94, p. 90.
56 RFE/RL Newsline, 22 Mar. 2001.
57 Gross, Neighbors, 74–80; Fox, “A Skeleton,” 81–82.
58 Gross, Neighbors, 68–69.
44 Michael Shafir

A few other Jews were saved in both places by local Poles who hid them from the
wrath of their neighbors.
The Jedwabne memorial was replaced in 2001 with another marker, in a cer-
emony boycotted (for reasons yet to be discussed) not only by the town’s pop-
ulation—with the exception of its mayor—but also by the Catholic Church. The
ceremony was attended by President Aleksander Kwaśniewski, who apologized
for the crime “as a citizen, and as president of the Republic of Poland.”⁵⁹ But the
new memorial still eschews identifying the perpetrators. It is erected “in memory
of the Jews of Jedwabne and surrounding areas, men, women, and children, fel-
low-dwellers of this land, murdered and burned alive at this site on 10 July 1941.”⁶⁰
On the eve of the ceremony, a Western agency reported that a sign on the door of
a Jedwabne grocery store read: “We do not apologize. It was the Germans who
murdered Jews in Jedwabne. Let the slanderers apologize to the Polish nation.” It
was signed by the “Committee for the Defense of the Good name of Poland,” an
organization close to the ultraconservative League of Polish Families.⁶¹
Deflective negationism is also prompted by the pursuit of immediate or short-
term popularity by politicians. That they may oscillate, even contradict them-
selves in their own pronouncements on the Holocaust is therefore no surprise.
Each pronouncement is aimed at serving the immediate needs of the hour. Former
Polish President Lech Wałęsa, for example, in an apparent spontaneous addi-
tion to his prepared speech, when addressing the Israeli Knesset in 1991 added
“Please forgive us,” triggering the applause of the Israeli parliamentary deputies,
but also the wrath of many of his countrymen. In 1995, when Poland observed the
fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Wałęsa knew better. Presiding
over ceremonies in Kraków’s Jagiellonian University on the morning of January
26, and in the afternoon over a gathering of Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Wałęsa
made no specific reference to Jews or the Holocaust. The inscription at Auschwitz
had, in the meantime, changed—but not so the mentality of an electorate brought
up in the belief that the Holocaust was, above all, one of the Polish nation.
Indeed, a public opinion poll released in that year showed that 47 percent of
Wałęsa’s countrymen believed that Auschwitz was, above all, the place of Polish
martyrdom and only 8 percent were of the opinion that most of the victims there
had been Jews. It was only in late afternoon, when ceremonies took place at Aus-
chwitz itself, and after protracted negotiations with the world Jewish leaders who

59 Robert S. Wistrich, “The Jedwabne Affair” Antisemitism Worldwide 2001/2 (Tel Aviv 2002),
60–75.
60 RFE/RL Newsline, 10 July 2001.
61 AP, 10 July 2001.
 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 45

were present, that Wałęsa amended a prepared speech, adding “especially the
Jewish nation” after having originally deplored the “suffering of many nations.”⁶²
Another example in point is provided by Hungarian Premier Viktor Orbán and
by his entourage. Orbán emulated the policies of his predecessor, József Antall,
who was of the opinion that if Holocaust issues in post-Communist Hungary must
be addressed at all, they should concentrate on Hungarian rescuers of Jews rather
than on the Jewish suffering and decimation.⁶³ Antall, of course, had a personal
stake in this issue. He was the son of a “Righteous Among the Nations,” and pre-
cisely because of that, he could not be suspected of antisemitism.⁶⁴ But he was
undoubtedly aware that the electorate to which he would appeal was generally
inclined to idealize Hungary’s pre-Communist past and tended to regard Jews as
perpetrators of Hungary’s own martyrdom at the hand of Communists. Moreover,
not many Hungarians were willing to regard the Jews as victims of their country-
men’s antisemitic passions. Ministers of his cabinet attended the 1993 ceremony
of reinterment of Horthy’s remains and Antall himself later visited the grave.
Before doing so, the premier referred to Admiral Horthy as having been a “Hun-
garian patriot” who “should be placed in the community of the nation and the
awareness of the people.”⁶⁵
Not that Horthy should be placed in the same “league” as Antonescu, Tiso, or
Pavelić. Yet no less than 550,000 Jews were exterminated in “Greater Hungary.”
Most of them perished before the Germans deposed Horthy in October 1944. The
harsh anti-Jewish legislation enacted under his rule, the loss of life of between
40,000 and 45,000 so-called “labor servicemen,” the murder of “alien” Jews
deported to Kamenets-Podolski in 1941, and the massacres in and around Újvidék
in 1942 cannot be laid at the door of the Germans. True, the extermination of the
bulk of Hungarian Jewry had long been delayed, and Horthy may have personally
played some role in that delay and in briefly halting deportations to Auschwitz
in July 1944.⁶⁶ But when it occurred—mostly after the German occupation of the
country in March 1944, the deadly deportations were executed with astonishing

62 Michael C. Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust
(Syracuse, N.Y. 1997), 131–32, pp. 139, 141.
63 László Karsai, “The Radical Right in Hungary,” in The Radical Right in Central and Eastern
Europe Since 1989, ed. Sabrina P. Ramet (University Park, Md. 1999), 133–46, p. 139.
64 István Deák, “Anti-Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in Hungary,” in Anti-
Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in Postcommunist Eastern Europe, ed. R. L.
Braham (New York 1994) 99–124, p. 119.
65 Cited in Braham 1993, 140.
66 Deák “Anti-Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in Hungary”; idem, “Nikolau von
Horthy: Ein umstrittener Staatsmann,” Europäische Rundschau 22 (1994): 71–87.
46 Michael Shafir

efficiency involving the large-scale collaboration of the Hungarian authorities,

particularly the gendarmerie.⁶⁷ At least nominally, Horthy was still head of state
(“Regent”) throughout a good part of that period. Not that Antall (himself a histo-
rian) or his successor were unaware of these facts. But the two were responding to
the electorate’s ignorance or prejudices regarding the Holocaust in pursuit both
of political popularity and creating a post-Communist identity.
In 1998, after a visit to the Hungarian pavilion in the Auschwitz exhibit,
Orbán, decided to reconstruct the pavilion which had been built by the Commu-
nist regime, finding it both inappropriate and neglected. The plans, submitted
by a commission headed by István Ihász, a museologist with well-known nation-
alist credentials, were little else than “a pro-Horthy apologia designed to sani-
tize the Nazi era in general and the Hungarian involvement in the Final Solution
in particular.” The commission envisaged portraying the “virtual symbiosis of
Hungarian Jewish life since the emancipation of Jews in 1867, downplaying the
many anti-Jewish manifestations as mere aberrations in the otherwise chivalrous
history of Hungary. It focused attention on the positive aspects of Jewish life, the
flourishing of the Jewish community between 1867 and 1944, the rescue activities
of those identified as Righteous, and Horthy’s saving of the Jews of Budapest.” At
the same time, the planned exhibition “blamed almost exclusively the Germans
for the destruction of the Jews.”⁶⁸ The exhibition was canceled after protests
from the country’s Federation of Jewish Communities. Reacting to the decision, a
spokesman of the federation said the country’s Jewish communities did not wish
to see the project halted, but “to see it is done right.”⁶⁹
It was Orbán’s advisor Mária Schmidt, who shortly thereafter again triggered
the community’s protests, after stating in a Le Pen-like manner that the Holocaust
had been but a “marginal issue” of the history of World War II. Yet Orbán issued
a statement largely exonerating Schmidt and expressing his “full confidence” in
her.⁷⁰ Schmidt had some sort of “vested interest” when she made the statement.
She had been a leading member of the commission that attempted to “cleanse”
out of the Auschwitz exhibit the Horthy atrocities against the Hungarian Jews.⁷¹
Deflective negationism is also manifest in Hungary (but not only there) under
the form of transforming the Nazi-allied country into a victim of the Germans,

67 Braham, “Assault on Historical Memory.”

68 Ibid.
69 RFE/RL Newsline, 9 and 10 Sept. 1999.
70 Magyar Hírlap and Hungarian Radio, in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts-Eastern Europe,
16 Nov. 1999; RFE/RL Newsline, 16 Nov. 1999.
71 Braham, “Assault on Historical Memory.”
 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 47

or, as Braham put it, “turning Germany’s last ally into its last victim.”⁷² All these
manifestations emerged from the option of Antall’s Hungarian Democratic Forum
(MDF) to display historic continuity—one later embraced by Orbán’s Alliance of
Young Democrats (FIDESZ) as well.
Deflective negationism is also embraced in Hungary by the radical Hungar-
ian Justice and Life Party (MIÉP), which, for all practical purposes, became an
ally of FIDESZ after the 1998 parliamentary elections. Like the conservatives,
MIÉP leader Csurka acknowledges and deplores the Holocaust, but even more
than them, denies any Hungarian responsibility for it, branding anyone who does
so a “traitor” whose only aim is to tarnish the reputation of the Hungarian people
and break its self-respect. While Csurka displayed a “concealed, coded” antisem-
itism and his remarks on the Holocaust were frequently aimed at brandishing
the spectre of “Jewish revenge” on an “innocent” Hungary, the conservative dis-
course of the József Antall and Viktor Orbán governments was not antisemitic
“in terms of intentions.” It “honestly” condemned the persecution of Jews and
it considered the Holocaust to have been “a tragic event in Hungarian history.”
However, since these governments strove to demonstrate the historical continuity
of anti-Communist conservatism as the most important character-istic of the Hun-
garian political system prior to the German occupation, this conservative type of
discourse also ended up being deflective. While there is a distinction between
“political antisemitism” (the MIÉP type of discourse) and “historical conserva-
tism” (the MDF-FIDESZ discourse), both are liable to fall down in confronting the
dark episodes in the national heritage.
Romanian deflective negationism shares with Hungary the drive to transform
the country into a victim, rather than a state sharing the antisemitic credo of the
Nazis, and participating in the perpetration of massive crimes. Unlike Hungary,
however, the drive to do so in Romania dates back to Communist times. In 1986,
for instance, the Bucharest weekly Luceafărul was telling its readers that “the
main feature of the Holocaust in northern Transylvania was anti-Romanian and
not antisemitic.”⁷³ After the fall of the former regime, a carefully selective collec-
tion of documents from the State Archives was published under the title Romania,

72 Ibid.
73 Cited in Randolph L. Braham, “The Exculpatory History of Romanian Nationalists: The
Exploitation of the Holocaust for Political Ends” in The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian
Jews During the Antonescu Era, ed. R. L. Braham (New York 1997), 45–59, p. 51.
48 Michael Shafir

the Great Victim of World War Two.⁷⁴ The roots of this perception lie in the Com-
munist period.
In the post-Communist period, at least two Romanian historians acknowl-
edged Romanian responsibility for the perpetrated massacres. Dinu Giurescu
concluded that 108,000 Romanian Jews were exterminated by the Romanian
authorities but his figures do not include the extermination carried out among
Ukrainian Jews.⁷⁵ Florin Constantiniu estimated the destruction (apparently of
both) at “some 200,000.”⁷⁶ Andrei Pippidi tended to accept as more accurate
the estimate of 120,000 by German historian Christa Zach.⁷⁷ Jewish historians of
Romanian origin residing in the United States or in Israel have produced figures
that are considerably higher. Radu Ioanid estimates that some 250,000 Jews (as
well as some 20,000 Roma) perished at the hands of the Romanian authorities,
whereas Jean Ancel came up with an estimate of 410,000, of which 170,000 are
Ukrainian Jews.⁷⁸ In its Final Report of 2005, the International Commission on
the Holocaust in Romania concluded that “between 280,000 and 380,000 Roma-
nian and Ukrainian Jews were murdered or died during the Holocaust in Romania
and the territories under its control. An additional 135,000 Romanian Jews living
under Hungarian control in Northern Transylvania also perished in the Holo-
caust.”⁷⁹
As part of its analysis, the Final Report critically examined all forms of dis-
tortion, negationism, and minimalization of the Holocaust in postwar Romania
in addition to clarifying the facts concerning the actual scale of Romanian partic-
ipation in the mass murders during World War II.⁸⁰

74 Victor Eskenasy, “Historiographers Against the Antonescu Myth,” in The Destruction of

Romanian and Ukrainian Jews During the Antonescu Era, ed. R. L. Braham (New York 1997),
271–302, p. 291.
75 Dinu Giurescu, România în al doilea război mondial (Romania in the Second World War)
(Bucharest 1999), 70, 91.
76 Florin Constantiniu, O istorie sinceră a poporului român (A sincere history of the Romanian
people) (Bucharest 1997), 394.
77 C. Zach, “Rumänien,” in Dimension des Völkersmords: Die Zahl der jüdischen Opfer des
Nazionalsozialismus, ed. W. Benz (Munich 1991); Andrei Pippidi, Despre statui şi morminte:
Pentru o istorie simbolică (On statues and tombs: for a symbolic history) (Iaşi 2000), 241; idem,
“Istoria şi dialectica terorismului” (History and the dialectics of terrorism), Lettre internationale
(Romanian edition) 39 (Autumn 2001): 12–15.
78 Jean Ancel, Transnistria (Bucharest 1998), vol. 3.
79 Final Report 2005, International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, eds. Tuvia
Friling, Radu Ioanid, and Mihail E. Ionescu (Bucharest 2005), 381–82.
80 See ibid., 333–75.
 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 49

* * *
A slightly more versatile form of deflective negationism consists in admitting
some national participation in crimes, but considering the perpetrators to have
been “on the fringe” in the country’s otherwise spotless history of relations with
the Jews. In Hungary, the “aberration” is considered to be Arrow-Cross Nyilas;
in Romania the role is played by the Legiune, as the Iron Guard was also called.
For Ceauşescu-inspired historiography, the Iron Guard had nothing Romanian
about itself, it only “slavishly emulated its Hitlerite tutors” and indulged into
“antisemitic diversionism.”⁸¹ The treatment by the Communists, as well as by the
post-Communists, of the pogrom carried out in Iaşi in late June 1941 is an example
of deflection to fringe. In this particular case, however, the “fringe” is said to have
collaborated as perpetrators with the Germans.
The fact that President Ion Iliescu would embrace the “fringe approach” was,
however, somewhat unexpected. Iliescu’s contortionist exercises in dealing with
the legacy of the Holocaust are worth contemplating. In a speech at the Coral
Temple in Bucharest on January 21, 2001, marking the sixtieth anniversary of
the Iron Guard pogrom in Bucharest, the president said the Iron Guardist “aber-
ration” had been a “delirium of intolerance and anti-Semitism.” Yet, he added,
that brief “delirium” excepted, there has been no Romanian contribution to “the
long European history” of persecution of the Jews, and it was “significant” that
there was “no Romanian word for pogrom.” Furthermore, he hastened to add, it
was “unjustified to attribute to Romania an artificially inflated number of Jewish
victims for the sake of media impact.” Romania’s distorted image, according to
Iliescu, was likely to be corrected when “Romanian [i.e., rather than Jewish] his-
torians will tackle the subject.”⁸²
Hardly six months had passed, however, when Iliescu’s “unique aberration”
of 1941 grew slightly larger. With Romania banging on NATO’s doors, and despite
the protests in the United States and Israel triggered by the Antonescu cult in
Romania, Iliescu attended a ceremony marking the Iaşi pogrom where he felt
compelled to declare that “no matter what we may think, international public
opinion considers Antonescu to have been a war criminal.”⁸³ Iliescu’s statement
in Iaşi triggered protests not only from the PRM, but also from among members

81 Braham, “Assault on Historical Memory”; Nicolae Minei, “Prefaţă” (Introduction), in

Zile însîngerate la Iaşi, 1941 (Bloody days in Iaşi, 1941), by Aurel Kareţki and Maria Covaci
(Bucharest 1978), 5–27, p. 16.
82 RFE/RL Newsline, 22 Jan. 2001.
83 RFE/RL Newsline, 26 June 2001.
50 Michael Shafir

of his own party, such as Senator Adrian Păunescu.⁸⁴ Back in 1993, both the PRM
and Păunescu (at that time first deputy chairman of the Socialist Labor Party)
had harshly criticized Iliescu for having participated in ceremonies marking the
Holocaust at the Coral Temple. The PRM protested earlier that year when Iliescu
had attended the opening of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington,
where, so it claimed, the “Romanian people” was unjustifiably accused of having
participated in the Holocaust against Jews.⁸⁵ However, at a speech dedicated to
Holocaust Remembrance Day in Romania on 12 October 2004, President Iliescu
declared himself fully committed to learning the lessons of the Holocaust and
disseminating them in school curricula, through the media, and to the younger
generation. This would not only render overdue homage to the Jewish community
of Romania, but be of fundamental importance in developing the democratic con-
science and civic spirit of the Romanian nation.
Such declarations are an important development, but they have not been able
to overcome the persistence and revival of Holocaust denial in post-Communist
Eastern Europe. This syndrome is often linked to suspicions of “anti-Polonism,”
“anti-Romanianism,” “anti-Lithuanianism” or “anti-Hungarianism,” in a word,
to a Jewish conspiracy to accuse or make culpable the nation as a whole. Cardi-
nal Glemp had, for example, blamed Jews in the past for using the Holocaust in
the cause of “anti-Polonism.” “We want,” Glemp told journalists on the eve of
the 2001 Jedwabne commemoration, “to apologize for all the evil that was per-
petrated by Polish citizens on citizens of the Judaic faith” in Jedwabne. However,
Glemp added, “we want to include in our prayers the other evil, that was perpe-
trated on Polish citizens of the Catholic faith, and in which Poles of the Judaic
faith had a part.”⁸⁶
Apologetics is still rampant, not only in Poland, Hungary, and Romania, but
also in countries like Slovakia. Stefan Polaković—a leading ideologist of Slovak
“clerico-fascism”—argues that the Hlinka Slovak People’s Party (HSĽS) and
Tiso himself cannot be blamed for the party’s eventual emulation of National
Socialism. Polaković was active in the United States as a prominent leader of the
Slovak Liberation Committee.⁸⁷ Like other postwar exiled leaders, he frequently
visited Slovakia, participating in conferences and symposia aimed at “cleans-

84 RFE/RL Newsline, 1, 4, and 5 June 2001.

85 Michael Shafir, “Marshal Antonescu’s Post-Communist Rehabilitation: Cui Bono?,” in The
Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews During the Antonescu Era, ed. Randolph L. Braham
(New York 1997) 349–410, pp. 369–70, 390.
86 RFE/RL Newsline, 4 May 2001. Emphasis mine.
87 Mešťan 30–35, 131; Cohen, Politics without a Past, 209, n. 50.
 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 51

ing” Tiso’s reputation and that of the state he headed. In an article published
in the “respectable” Literárny týždennik in early 1993 under the title “What was
Populism all about?,” Polaković argued that the HSĽS’ “populism” was, and
continues to be, wrongly associated with Nazism. In fact, he claims, association
with Nazi Germany was only a “cosmetic defect” and Tiso’s Catholic state would
have entered the annals of respectable statehood, were it not for what he calls
in a euphemism “the deterioration of the political situation” after 1939. By that
he means the emulation of National Socialism, the introduction of anti-Jewish
measures, and the subsequent deportations of Jews to extermination camps,
though Polaković never calls the child by its name. It was, he claims, the fault of
Prime Minister Vojtech Tuka and that of Hlinka Guard commander-in-chief Alex-
ander Mach that “tainted the image of modern Slovak statehood.” It was Tuka
who embarked upon an emulation of National Socialism and “triggered off the
inhumane solution of the Jewish issue.” But in the same breath, Polaković also
argues that Nazism in Slovakia had been merely “formal,” inasmuch as the HSĽS
was a single party with a “leader” at its head and the Hlinka Guard members
were wearing uniforms.⁸⁸ Much of the same argument was brought out during
his lectures in Slovakia by Dr. Jozef M. Kirschbaum, a major figure in Slovakia’s
wartime government and the secretary-general of Tiso’s Party of National Unity:
he insisted that there was no antisemitism in the Slovak state, and the “Jewish
question” was solely in the hands of the Germans and Tuka.⁸⁹
Deflecting guilt for the Holocaust onto the Germans alone and deflecting it
to the “fringe,” in theory at least, does not have to involve antisemitic postures.
Shifting the guilt to the Jews, however, is undoubtedly a reflection of the propen-
sity. One can practically find in its different variations all the well-established
forms of antisemitism, ranging from religious to the politically reactive in such
manoeuvres. This syndrome includes the widely popular argument that the Jews
provoked the Holocaust because of their deep involvement with Communism.
Also frequent at “scientific” colloquia, in volumes and in articles in the press
produced by the defenders of extreme nationalism and/or its interwar record, is
the deicidal justification of the Holocaust. In a 719-page volume produced in 1997
by the Friends of President Tiso in Slovakia and Abroad association and similar
groups in Slovakia itself, we learn from a chapter “On the Jewish Question” that
the Holocaust was the price the Jews had to pay for having crucified Jesus Christ.
There is, however, room for hope. According to Jozef Štítničan, in an article called
“The Jewish Tragedy,” he writes that the Jews “over-valued themselves, believing

88 Mešťan, Anti-Semitism in Slovak Politics, 67–68.

89 Cohen, Politics without a Past, 207; Mešťan, Anti-Semitism in Slovak Politics, 147.
52 Michael Shafir

they are more than the others.” They thought that with the help of their Messiah,
they would be able to rule the world. To this day, Jews still believe they are the
chosen people. Even after “annihilation in the gas chambers,” they believe this
and have “set up a state for themselves,” to which they have no right. They can,
however, be saved if “we win them over to collaborate in Christ’s design.”⁹⁰ In a
similarly-argued article in the PRM weekly România mare in 1993, a Romanian
lady was writing that the criminal structure of the Jews is reflected in “the cruci-
fixion of Christ” and their consequently being “a deicidal people.”⁹¹
Another “explanation” for the Holocaust is taken straight from the “ency-
clopedia” of conspiracy theories, claiming that “world Jewish power produced
Hitler.” Áron Mónus, the publisher of the Hungarian translation of Mein Kampf,
makes this argument in an epilogue to the volume, as well as in a book he
authored under the title Conspiracy: The Empire of Nietzsche. The title of the first
chapter in the volume is conclusive in itself: “Freemasonry Encouraged the Holo-
caust.” Chapter two asserts that “Adolf Hitler Was in the Pay of Jewish Freema-
sons,” and the following chapter is on “Adolf Hitler, the Quack Zionist Agent.”
Similar views come out of Slovakia. According to an article on Freemasonry in
Zmena in 1992, international Jewry and Zionism nurtured Hitler and provoked the
war in order to facilitate the setting up of the Jewish state. This was also the argu-
ment of historian Arvéd Grébert’s contribution to the 1992 volume, An Attempt at
a Political Profile of Jozef Tiso. It was Zionism itself that had the greatest interest
in provoking antisemitism in order to prepare the ground for claiming the State
of Israel. Róbert Letz, a senior lecturer at Bratislava’s Comenius University also
blames Zionism, but from a different perspective. Were it not for Zionism, Jews
would have assimilated and the Holocaust could have been avoided.⁹² Ladislav
Pittner, who was Slovak Interior Minister representing the KDH till May 2001,
and whose father was a committed Tiso supporter, argued similarly in 1998 that
Zionism might have been behind the pogroms in Russia in order to convince Jews
to leave for Palestine. Pittner went on to “reveal” that German Admiral Wilhelm
Canaris had “very clear documentation indicating that Hitler and Himmler had
Jewish ancestors.”⁹³ In Romania, Theodoru argued that Hitler had been “merely a
puppet” in Jewish hands, and writer Ioan Buduca concurred, seeing antisemitism

90 Mešťan Anti-Semitism in Slovak Politics, 182–83.

91 Cited in Voicu Zeii cei ră i, 128–29.
92 Mešťan, Anti-Semitism in Slovak Politics, 85, 119–20, 144.
93 Cited in ibid., 194.
 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 53

as a Zionist ploy to advance the purpose of Jewish emigration.⁹⁴ Others, like Ilie
Neacşu, editor-in-chief of the weekly Europa, blamed the Holocaust on the “fact”
that after World War I, the descendants of Judah had become masters over the
German economy, culture, and politics.⁹⁵
Many library shelves would be needed to store the countless number of books
and articles in media outlets (many of them identified with pro-Western postures)
that “explain” Holocaust-related events in Romania through such reactive ratio-
nalizations. From outright negationists like Theodoru to the “selective negation-
ists,” there is agreement that Jewish disloyalty is what had triggered Antonescu’s
reactive massacre of Jews. The main argument rests on the large-scale support
allegedly rendered by Jews to the Soviet occupation forces in Bessarabia and
northern Bukovina in 1940, and on the alleged Jewish participation not only in
humiliating or torturing the retreating Romanian army, but in the physical liqui-
dation of Romanian military personnel. Viewed from this perspective, the July
1940 Dorohoi and Galaţi pogroms, the pogrom in Iaşi, the atrocities committed in
Transnistria (whenever they are acknowledged, even in minimalist terms) can all
be explained in terms of self-defense and/or spontaneous revenge on the Jews for
their deeds in 1940. The latest in a long series of such arguments has come from
Paris, where exiled writer Paul Goma, the most prominent and most courageous
dissident under Ceauşescu, put it in simplistic and grossly distorted, terms: in the
beginning, there was anti-Romanianism.⁹⁶
The reactive explanation was quite clearly backed from the outset in post-Com-
munist Romania by historians who under the previous regime had worked for the
Communist Party’s Institute of History, or for Army’s Center for the Research and
Study of Military History and Theory headed by the executed president’s brother,
Ilie Ceauşescu. It figured prominently in a volume published in 1992 by two
Romanian historians from the army’s own Academy for Higher Military Studies.⁹⁷
It was also prominently displayed in a volume by historian Gheorghe Buzatu as a
sequel to a tome on the Second World War’s “secret history” published in the last

94 Ioan Buduca, “Care-i buba? (Where’s the sore point?),” România literară 15 (22–28 April
1998).
95 Ilie Neacşu, “Rabinul suferă de hemoroizi” (The rabbi suffers from hemorrhoids), Europa,
6–13 April 1993.
96 Paul Goma, “Basarabis şi problema” (Bessarabia and the problem), Vatra, nos. 3–4 (2002):
34–41; nos. 5–6 (2002): 32–46.
97 Ioan Scurtu and Constantin Hlihor, Anul 1940: Drama românilor dintre Prut şi Nistru (1940:
The drama of Romanians between the rivers Prut and Dniester) (Bucharest 1992).
54 Michael Shafir

years of Communist rule.⁹⁸ By then, the latter author’s views on the Holocaust
had already acquired notoriety. They were succinctly expressed by the title of a
booklet Buzatu published with the Iron Guardist publishing house Majadahonda.
Rather than being a perpetrator of the Holocaust, Romania had been its victim.
It had undergone a Holocaust at the hand of the Jews, and the year 1940 marked
its beginning.⁹⁹ The booklet would eventually become a separate chapter in a
volume based on research Buzatu had conducted in Soviet archives.¹⁰⁰ Although
this tome purports to deal with Romanians in the Kremlin’s Archives, most of its
“heroes” are Jews who served Soviet power and would later become prominent
leaders in post–World War II Romania.
This leads me to a particularly obnoxious form of deflective manipulation in
which Jews are themselves the perpetrators of the Holocaust. In his Wastelands
of Historical Truth (1988), late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, who claimed
to be a historian among his other callings, set out to exonerate his fellow Croats
from responsibility for participation in the Holocaust.¹⁰¹ The infamous Jasenovac
concentration camp, where several tens of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and Roma
perished during the Pavelić regime, was for Tudjman a “myth” blown out of all
proportion. Its main purpose was to back the theory of “the genocidal nature of
every and any Croat nationalism,” to “create a black legend of the historical guilt
of the entire Croat people, for which they must still make restitution.” (Similar
efforts at “unmasking” of alleged “culpabilization” of the nation as a whole were,
as we have seen, present in Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania). Tudjman nonethe-
less stood out in his deflectionist postures, which were not very far from outright
negationism. This was due to his questioning of the figure of six million, which he
deemed to be “based too much on emotionally biased testimonies, as well as on
one-sided and exaggerated data resulting from postwar settling of accounts,” and
to his cynical allegations that Jews had actually been the main perpetrators in
Jasenovac. They are said to have “managed to grab all the more important jobs in
the prisoner hierarchy,” and to have taken advantage of the fact that the Ustasha
trusted them more than they trusted Serbs. Tudjman concluded that “The Jew
remains a Jew, even in the Jasenovac camp.... Selfishness, craftiness, unreliabil-
ity, stinginess, deceit, are their main characteristics.” To “demonstrate” that

98 Gheorghe Buzatu, Din istoria secretă a celui de-al doilea război mondial (From the secret
history of World War II) (Bucharest 1995).
99 Gheorghe Buzatu, Aşa a început holocaustul împotriva poporului român (How the Holocaust
against the Romanian people started) (Bucharest 1995).
100 Gheorghe Buzatu, Românii în arhivele Kremlinului (The Romanians in the Kremlin’s
archives) (Bucharest 1996).
101 Franjo Tudjman, Wastelands of Historical Truth (1988).
 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 55

Jews rather than the Ustasha Croats were the main perpetrators, Tudjman must,
however, make figures more plausible for prisoners to be able to accomplish the
deed. He thus dismissed not only the 700,000 figure advanced by the Serbs, but
also the 60,000 victims claimed by Croat historians. No more than 30–40,000 are
said to have perished in the camp, some at the hands of the Ustasha, but most
at the hands of Jews, who controlled the liquidation apparatus.¹⁰² In a letter to
Croatia’s Jewish community in February 1994, Tudjman, (who had put the word
Holocaust in quotes when implicitly criticizing world Jewry efforts to prevent Kurt
Waldheim’s election as Austrian president), eventually apologized for these sec-
tions in his book.¹⁰³ But in subsequent revised versions of Wastelands, the basic
argument did not much change, though the more offensive sections were some-
what diluted.¹⁰⁴
Tudjman is not a unique case in the annals of Holocaust denial. He does,
however, stand out for having made the allegation from the position of being
Croatia’s most prominent politician. Similar examples come from the psychically
deranged lunatic fringe that can by no means be compared with Tudjman. In an
article published in his native Hungary, Australian-exiled Viktor Padányi had
also claimed that the management of the camps had fallen into Jewish hands.
And this, according to Gabriel Hoffmann, was also the case of the Sered forced
labor camp in Slovakia where, he claimed in a 1998 article in Zmena that he
had been interned himself before having converted. In Sered, not only did Jews
administer the camp themselves, but the place was run by a certain “Hauptober-
sturmführer Zimmermann,” who in reality was no one else than “the dreaded
Simon Wiesenthal.” Wiesenthal was supposedly there with a false identity and
wearing a German uniform. He ordered the murder of Jews suspected of collabo-
ration with the Nazis and had forced Hoffmann himself to kill prisoners by lethal
injection.¹⁰⁵

102 Cited in Radmila Milentijevic, “Anti-Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust
in Postcommunist Yugoslavia,” in Anti-Semitism and the Treatment of the Holocaust in
Postcommunist Eastern Europe, ed. Randolph L. Braham (New York 1994), 225–50, pp. 234–36.
103 See Robert S. Wistrich, Antisemitism in the New Europe (Oxford 1994), 15n; Gruber
Struggle of Memory, 24.
104 See, for example, Franjo Tudjman, Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy (New
York 1996).
105 Cited in Mešťan, Anti-Semitism in Slovak Politics, 188.
56 Michael Shafir

Selective Negationism
Selective negationism stands somewhere between outright and deflective nega-
tionism. It does not deny the Holocaust as having taken place elsewhere, but
excludes any participation of members of one’s own nation in its perpetration.
The fringe ceases to exist in selective negationism. It shares with deflective nega-
tionism its prominent function of externalizing guilt. And just as outright nega-
tionists may occasionally indulge in deflective denial, deflective negationists may
embrace the discourse of selective negation (and vice versa).
Nowhere in post-Communist East Central Europe is selective negationism
so blatant as in Romania. According to its champions, not only was Antonescu
innocent of any crimes against the Jews, but the Iron Guard never touched a
Jewish hair! The Romanian champions of selective negationism are not (as one
might have expected) semi-educated marginals. Two of the most emblematic
figures among them are university professors, one being a historian specializ-
ing in modern Romanian history, the other teaching Romanian linguistics at the
University of Bucharest. The Iaşi-based history professor, Gheorghe Buzatu, has
been a deputy chairman of the PRM, deputy chairman of the Romanian Senate,
and chairman of the Marshal Antonescu Foundation, of which Theodoru was
executive chairman. Until September 2001 Buzatu was also director of a histori-
cal institute in Iaşi affiliated with the Romanian Academy. He was forced to resign
from the latter position after the publication, at his own initiative and under the
institute’s auspices, of a venomous racist and particularly antisemitic book by a
fellow-PRM deputy.¹⁰⁶
As Buzatu put it in an interview with the Movement for Romania weekly Miş-
carea in 1995, “there has been no Holocaust in Romania during World War II,”
with the exception of Hungary-occupied Transylvania.¹⁰⁷ Until a few years ago,
Buzatu was, however, willing to admit that the Guard had indulged in crimes,
though they were presented as a Romanian national reaction to the rise of Bol-
shevism and its crimes, with which Jews had been prominently associated.¹⁰⁸ As
he put it in an article in the PRM weekly România mare: “Crime Begets Crime.”¹⁰⁹
He has since, however, embraced Ion Coja’s selective negationism. For Coja, an

106 See RFE/RL Newsline, 23, 24, and 28 Aug. 2001; and Mediafax, 11 Sept. 2001.
107 Mişcarea, no. 7 (1–15 April 1995).
108 See Michael Shafir, “Marshal Antonescu’s Post-Communist Rehabilitation: Cui Bono?” in
The Destruction of Romanian and Ukrainian Jews During the Antonescu Era, ed. Randolph L.
Braham (New York 1997), 349–410, pp. 383–84.
109 Gheorghe Buzatu, “Crima naşte crimă”(Crime begets crime), România mare, 22 Dec. 1995.
 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 57

emblematic figure in Romanian historical denial, the Iron Guard never commit-
ted any of the atrocities attributed to it. Indeed, it was not even antisemitic!¹¹⁰
The January 1941 pogrom by the Iron Guard in Bucharest, Coja claims, never hap-
pened. Its 120 victims, some of whom were hanged on hooks at the slaughter-
house with the inscription “Kosher meat” on them are all an invention. The best
proof is that when the Communists took power, nobody was put on trial, although
so many Jews were then in the party leadership. Jews may have died during the
January uprising against Antonescu, but nobody has ever proved that the crimes
were actually committed by the Iron Guard.¹¹¹
The assassination of historian Nicolae Iorga in those days was not commit-
ted by the Iron Guard either, but ordered by the KGB, which had infiltrated the
movement. Moreover, according to Coja, it was a well-kept secret that the KGB
was in the hands of the “occult.” The same “occult” elements would eventually
order the assassination of Nicolae Ceauşescu, as indeed it would commission the
liquidation of Romanian-born scholar Ioan Petru Culianu in the United States in
May 1991, being aware that the scholar had discovered the secrets of the Jewish
occult and Communist world domination.¹¹²
In mid-2001 Buzatu and Coja chaired a symposium in Bucharest whose title—
telling in itself—was “Has There Been a Holocaust in Romania?” The symposium
was divided into two panels, the first examining the “questionable” occurrence
of the Shoah in Romania; the second, the reasons for the existence of a “power-
fully institutionalized anti-Romanianism.” As an outcome of the second panel, a
Romanian League for the Struggle Against Anti-Romanianism, headed by Coja,
was set up. The symposium’s resolution was published, among other places, in
the Iron Guardist journal Permanenţe (no. 7, July 2001) in both Romanian and
“Pidjin English.” The document was signed “pro forma” by Coja and emblemati-
cally assumed the selective negationist posture. Its authors, it was stated, “want
to make clear that we have nothing to do with those people and opinions contest-
ing as a whole the occurrence of the Jewish holocaust [sic!] during World War II.”
It said that Jews “have suffered almost everywhere in the Europe [sic!] of those
years, but not in Romania,” and it added that “the testimony of trustworthy Jews”
demonstrates that “the Romanian people had in those years a behavior honoring
the human dignity [sic!].”

110 See Voicu, Teme antisemite în discursul public, 117–23.

111 Ion Coja, Legionarii noştri (Our Legionnaires) (Bucharest: Editura Kogaion, 1997), 156–69.
112 Ion Coja, Marele manipulator şi asasinarea lui Culianu, Ceauşescu, Iorga (The grand
manipulator and the assassination of Culianu, Ceauşescu, Iorga) (Bucharest 1999).
58 Michael Shafir

In support of their affirmations, the participants brought several “argu-

ments.” They started by presenting excerpts from what they claimed was the
1955 testimony before a Swiss court of the former leader of the Romanian Jewish
Community in Romania, Wilhelm Filderman. The document has never been pro-
duced and whether it really exists at all is uncertain. The trial involved five Roma-
nian exiles who had attacked the Bucharest diplomatic representation in Bern,
briefly took it over and in the course of the attack killed the legation’s driver. The
authorities in Romania and abroad launched a large-scale campaign against the
attackers and those Romanian exile personalities who testified in the attackers’
defense. However, Filderman’s name was never mentioned during that campaign.
Filderman is said to have told the court that “During the period of Hitler’s
domination of Europe, I was in permanent touch with Marshal Antonescu. He
did all he could to ease the lives of Jews exposed to Nazi Germans’ persecutions.
I must underline that the Romanian population was not antisemitic and that the
misfortunes suffered by the Jews were the work of the German Nazis and the Iron
Guard. Marshal Antonescu withstood successfully the Nazi pressure that was
imposing hard measures against the Jews.” Filderman added that owing to Anto-
nescu’s “energetic intervention,” the deportation of more than 20,000 Jews from
Bukovina was stopped and that it was due to Antonescu’s “political strategies”
that the assets of the Jewish people were placed under a transitionary adminis-
trative regime, making them [seemingly] appear as lost, in order to conserve them
and ensure their future restitution at the ripe time.”
On the face of it, this might be considered a shattering testimony. In fact, it
was an obviously misleading one, highly unlikely to have been made by a man
familiar with all the details of the events of those years. On Antonescu’s orders,
90,344 Bukovinian Jews had been deported to Transnistria.¹¹³ The 20,000 Buko-
vinian Jews allegedly mentioned by Filderman owed their lives to the interven-
tion of Cernăuţi Mayor Traian Popovici rather than to Antonescu.¹¹⁴ And above
all, the Germans were never involved in the physical deportation of Jews from
Romania, since this was entirely a Romanian-handled matter. So whom could
Antonescu’s “energetic intervention” have possibly targeted? As for the safe-
guarding of Jewish properties with an eye to better times, it is sufficient to consult
the many documents on Filderman’s protests and interventions to realize that, at

113 Radu Ioanid, Evreii sub Regimul Antonescu (The Jews under the Antonescu regime).
(Bucharest 1997), 233.
114 Matatias Carp, Cartea neagră (The black book), vols. 2–3 (Bucharest 1996).
 Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe 59

best, this reflected a lost memory.¹¹⁵ But it is also sufficient to read the memoirs of
Radu Lecca, the man in charge of “Aryanizing” Jewish assets (and who claims to
have been the “savior of Romanian Jewry” after depleting it) to be edified to what
extent such a claim can hold.¹¹⁶
At Antonescu’s trial in 1946, Filderman testified that “The Antonescu gover-
nance resulted in the death of 150,000 Bukovinian and Bessarabian Jews,” adding
that “the actual number of victims might be larger.” Antonescu himself said at the
trial that according to “my own calculations, no more than 150,000–170,000 Jews
were deported” to Transnistria.¹¹⁷ But above all, as Lya Benjamin points out, the
testimony attributed to Filderman contradicted his entire activity and correspon-
dence with Marshal Antonescu and others during the war and in the immediate
postwar period.¹¹⁸
In his address to the symposium as well as in his article on Marshal Anto-
nescu, Coja brought another “witness” to the stand of “Romanian innocence”:
former Romanian Chief Rabbi Alexandru Şafran.¹¹⁹ Already in 1999, in his book,
The Grand Manipulator, Coja had hinted that “a rabbi” who is an “important
Jewish leader” has written a dedication on a book offered to the son of executed
war criminal Gheorghe Alexianu, exonerating his father from any guilt. Alexianu
was governor of Transnistria, and Coja claimed that the elderly Jewish leader had
sworn Alexianu, Jr. to silence for as long as he was still alive, because “the poor
man fears the reaction of the community, of his own faith brethren.” And the
apprehension was justified, he added—“witness that Filderman has also left his
declaration exonerating fully and definitively Marshal Antonescu only in his tes-
tament.”¹²⁰ The “old Jewish leader” was said to have offered Alexianu, Jr. a book
with a dedication “in the memory of your illustrious father, who during his entire
life and professional activity, but particularly during the dark period of the war,
has done so much, wholeheartedly and generously, for the [Jewish] community.

115 See Lya Benjamin, “Dr. Filderman şi regimul antonescian între realitate şi mistificare” (Dr.
Filderman and the Antonescu Regime Between reality and Mystification), Buletinul Centrului,
Muzeului şi Arhivei istorice a evreilor din România, no. 7 (2001): 40–46.
116 Radu Lecca, Eu i-am salvat pe evreii din România (I saved the Romanian Jews) (Bucharest:
Editura Roza vânturilor, 1994).
117 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum/Serviciul Român de Informaţii, 267 (270) and
16, respectively.
118 Benjamin, “Dr. Filderman.”
119 Ion Coja, “Simpozion internaţional: Holocaust în România” (1–7), România mare, 13 July–
24 August 2001.
120 Ion Coja, Marele manipulator, 299–300.
60 Michael Shafir

He paid a terrible and totally unjustified price at the order of the Communists.
May he be delivered from his whole suffering!”¹²¹
No explanation was offered as to how former Chief Rabbi Şafran had over-
come his apprehensions. Intrigued, the author of these lines asked a relative of
the aging rabbi living in Geneva to clarify the authenticity of the claim. Instead
of a response, Rabbi Şafran, who was almost immobilized by illness, directed me
through his nephew to the relevant part of his memoirs. Alexianu, he wrote there,
was “famous for his cruelty.”¹²²
The question has sometimes been raised as to how one should respond to the
“negationists” or so-called historical “revisionists”who constantly claim to chal-
lenge our picture of the past. The response was provided long ago by Pierre Vidal-
Naquet: “one can and should enter into discussion concerning the ‘revisionists’...
But one should not enter into debate with the ‘revisionists.’ It is no concern to
me whether the ‘revisionists’ are neo-Nazi or extreme left wing in their politics:
whether they are characterized psychologically as perfidious, perverse, paranoid
or quite simply idiotic. I have nothing to reply to them and will not do so. Such is
the price to be paid for intellectual coherence.”¹²³

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Joanna Michlic
The Jedwabne Debate:
Reshaping Polish National Mythology
In recent decades, the subject of collective memory has become a compelling pre-
occupation of academics of various disciplines as well as non-academics. French
historian Henry Rousso has pointed to memory as a “value reflecting the spirit of
our time.” ¹ One aspect of the study of collective memory is that of the “dark past”
of nations in their relations with their ethnic and national minorities, the ways
in which nations recollect and rework the memory of such a past, and how this
memory impacts on each of their collective identities. Various new studies reveal
that as with other uncomfortable memories haunting Europe, the Holocaust was
repressed and excluded from public debate for a relatively long period of time.²
The development of public debate on the subject was dependent on a political
stability that permitted public reckoning, as well as the acceptance of self-crit-
icism within a particular collective culture.³ One can argue that in many former
Baltic and East European communist states, such as Lithuania, Latvia, Slovakia,
and the Ukraine, that such debates have yet to take place.
Between 2000 and 2002, Poland was the foremost national community under-
going such a prominent and profound public discussion, triggered by the publi-
cation of Neighbors by Jan Tomasz Gross, which describes the collective murder
of the Jewish community of Jedwabne in northeastern Poland by its ethnic Polish
neighbors on July 10, 1941. Rather than reviewing the historical events, or pro-
viding a critique of Gross’s book, I shall focus on the dominant Polish canon of
remembering the Holocaust and wartime Polish-Jewish relations in the postwar
collective memory and I will look at the extent to which the debate over Neighbors
led to a critical reevaluation and rejection of that canon.

1 Henry Rousso, La hantise du passé: entretien avec Phillipe Petit (Paris, 1998), 14.
2 See studies on the collective memory of the Holocaust in Germany, such as Geoffrey
Hartman, ed., Bitburg in Moral and Political Perspective (Bloomington, Ind., 1986); Jeffrey Herf,
Divided Memory. The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), and Siobhan
Kattago, Ambiguous Memory. The Nazi Past And German National Identity (Westport, Conn.,
2001). On memory of the Holocaust in France, see, for example, Richard J. Golsan, ed., Memory,
the Holocaust and French Justice: The Bousquet and Touvier Affairs (Dartmouth, 1996); and in
Europe, see Judith Miller, One by One, by One Facing the Holocaust (New York, 1990).
3 The importance of self-criticism in the process of reckoning is raised by Iwona Irwin-Zarecka,
Frames of Remembrance (New Brunswick, N.J., 1994.
68 Joanna Michlic

Neighbors represents what French historian Pierre Nora has termed a clear
counter-memory to the accepted canon.⁴ No other previous work succeeded in
triggering the endorsement of counter-memory by a considerable number of reli-
gious and political leaders, intellectuals, and a segment of the general public.
Furthermore, other issues of Polish history and identity began to be reassessed,
such as the attitude of the Polish state toward “others,” its policies of inclusion
and exclusion, and patterns of social and cultural reconstruction. Among various
right-wing ethno-national political and social groups, Neighbors set off a strongly
defensive reinforcement of the dominant accepted canon of remembering the
Holocaust and wartime Polish-Jewish relations. This canon, discussed in more
detail below, is made up of various narratives which are both intellectually and
morally disturbing. Thus the debate over Gross’s book can be viewed as a battle
over memory and over regaining a more historically truthful image of Polish-Jew-
ish relations of the wartime period, and a more objective self-image of Polish
society.
I use the term, the “Polish dark past,” to refer to that aspect of Polish relations
with its Jewish minority which reflects negatively on the ethnic Polish major-
ity group as a witness to the Nazi genocide of Jews. Within this aspect I include
anti-Jewish perceptions, beliefs and sentiments, and anti-Jewish acts carried out
by individuals, or military and civilian groups. The massacre of the Jews of Jed-
wabne and other similar wartime massacres can be classified as coming from
the most extreme spectrum of wrongdoing committed by members of the Polish
majority against members of the Jewish minority. Of course, one should bear in
mind that available wartime records, both Jewish and Polish show the collective
massacres of Jews to be a much less frequent occurrence than the other manifes-
tations of the dark past.
At this point I must stress that I reject the notion that ethnic Poles were accom-
plices to the Nazi genocide of the Jews. Nevertheless, the dark past has been a key
component of the history of Polish-Jewish relations during the Holocaust. This
is a past that has refused to go away despite having been repressed and rejected
from the social history of Poland for nearly sixty years. I also view this past as an
interesting illustration of a general problem—the treatment of unwanted ethnic
minorities in multi-ethnic societies during conditions of war and occupation.

4 For reflections on history, memory, and counter memory, see Pierre Nora, “General
Introduction: Between Memory and History” in Realms of Memory: The Construction of the
French Past (in English) ed. Laurence D. Kritzman, vol. 1: Conflicts and Divisions (New York,
1997). The article first appeared in English translation as “Between Memory and history; Les
Lieux de mémoire,” Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 13–25.
 The Jedwabne Debate: Reshaping Polish National Mythology 69

Public Memory of the Holocaust

in communist Poland

During the postwar communist era, the memory of the Holocaust and of Pol-
ish-Jewish relations was subjected to a massive process of reworking and manip-
ulation in the service of various political, ideological, and social needs. As a
result, a particular representation of the Holocaust was constructed, and this was
the accepted canon of remembering the event in Polish collective memory. It was
expressed and cultivated at cultural events and commemorative sites, and in offi-
cial governmental speeches and historical narratives after 1945.
The process of reworking the memory of the Holocaust had already begun
during the Stalinist period (1948–1953), at a time when the event was not per-
ceived as a convenient subject for the newly-imposed Communist regime either
in Poland or other East European communist states, such as East Germany. The
genocide of Jews hardly fits into the Soviet-made narratives of the “anti-fascist
working class front,” nor the Marxist-Leninist interpretation of the Second World
War. Other factors, such as the awareness of the postwar Soviet treatment of
Jewish matters, and the underlying issue of national unity also played a role in
the official evaluation and presentation of the Holocaust in Poland. Thus, the
memory of the event, as historian Michael Steinlauf put it, became marginalized
and repressed from public memory.⁵ A good illustration was the fate of sites of
Holocaust commemoration, such as the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Fight-
ers designed by Nathan Rappaport, erected in the city in 1948.⁶ Commemorations
staged there were careful to de-emphasize its Jewish character and meaning, and
it can be argued that from the very beginning, it functioned, ironically, more as
a place of ritual forgetfulness that was to become its chief marker right up to the
1980s.
The conviction that “one should not emphasize Jewish matters” was also
reflected in the regime’s position on any discussion of the Polish past. To raise
questions about Polish wartime attitudes and actions toward Jews was no longer
permitted under the Stalinist regime. The first postwar debate of 1945–1947 in
relation to the Jewish minority, carried out by a small group of Polish intellec-

5 Michael C. Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead. Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust (New
York, 1997), 63–74.
6 See, for example, Marcin Zaremba, “Urząd zapomnienia,” Polityka, no. 41 (13 October 2001):
72.
70 Joanna Michlic

tuals of mostly left-wing orientation, was abruptly silenced in 1948.⁷ The regime
also silenced any discussion on the issue of the emotional and moral distance of
Polish society from the Holocaust—“witnessing the Jewish genocide without real
witnessing,”—that had been raised in literary and non-literary works by a group
of Polish intellectuals during the war and early postwar period.
The most crucial reworking of the memory of the genocide of Polish Jews was
conducted later, during the second half of the 1950s and throughout the 1960s, in
the era of Władysław Gomułka. During this period a gradual process of the eth-
no-nationalization of communism took place, and the “Jewish question” resur-
faced within the Party itself.⁸ Characteristically, the Polish Communist narrative
became increasingly acceptable to the general public. In a pioneering study on
the memory of the Holocaust in postwar Poland, Michael Steinlauf provides a
convincing explanation for this phenomenon. This acceptance was possible, he
argued, because “the official way of dealing with the memory of the Holocaust
reflected, after all, a popular need.” ⁹
As the 1950s progressed, the Holocaust continued to be repressed through the
process of “internationalization of its victims.” This was nowhere more visible
than in the commemorative rituals at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial site,
where the term “Jew” was hardly mentioned: the Jewishness of the victims was
subsumed under the nationalities of the countries from which they came. Simul-
taneously, the Holocaust was gradually reworked within a specifically Polish
national framework with the genocide of Polish Jews frequently presented as
simply a part of the (ethnic) Polish tragedy—expressed as “six million Poles died
during the war.” This polonized version nurtured and strengthened the popular
belief that the Poles had suffered more than any other nation during the war.
In turn, the Holocaust was presented as an event parallel to the (ethnic) Polish
tragedy of the war, with the Jewish loss of life numerically symmetrical to ethnic
Polish losses. Thus was the distinction between the fate of Poles and Jews blurred
and the seeds of future competition over suffering planted.
If mentioned at all, the darker side of Poland’s past was presented as a mar-
ginal social problem, limited to a small and morally degenerate group outside the
healthy body of Polish society, as in other European nations. Moreover, research

7 See, for example, Joanna Michlic, “The Holocaust and Its Aftermath as Perceived in Poland:
Voices of Polish Intellectuals, 1945–1947,” in The Return of Jews to Europe, 1945–49, ed. David
Bankier (Jerusalem, 2003).
8 On the development of the patterns of remembering the Holocaust in the communist era,
see, for example, Lucy Dawidowicz, The Holocaust and the Historians (Cambridge Mass., 1981),
88–124; and Steinlauf, Bondage, 62–88.
9 Steinlauf, Bondage, 74.
 The Jedwabne Debate: Reshaping Polish National Mythology 71

into this part of the past was heavily censored and could be read only in a small
number of publications produced by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw,
which were not widely available in any case. The official position was defined
by narratives of the solidarity of Polish society with its Jewish fellow citizens,
emphasizing the high number of Polish rescue operations and levels of assis-
tance. In disseminating such narratives, the Communist Party was promoting
itself as the “people’s party” in order to increase its legitimization within the
Polish community.
It is worth mentioning that the Communist regime of the 1950s and 1960s had
actually appropriated these narratives from the non-communist opposition of the
earlier period. During the war, the Polish Government-in-Exile had created and
promoted them in an attempt to maintain the good image of Poland in response
to the horrifying news that issued from the German-occupied Polish lands. In the
postwar era, the narratives were also frequently disseminated in Polish émigré
circles as well as among individuals in the country who were former victims of
Stalinist terror. Thus we find very similar positions on Polish-Jewish relations of
the Second World War in two otherwise opposing political and ideological camps.
In the late 1960s, the “Partisan” faction within the Communist Party, led by
General Mieczysław Moczar, was to provide the most extensive and damaging
reworking of the memory of the Holocaust. A radical version of the dominant
canon containing strongly anti-Jewish elements emerged, which became an inte-
gral part of the official antisemitic campaign that culminated in the so-called
anti-Zionist/anti-Jewish purge of 1968.
The Partisans represented the strongest self-defined ethno-nationalist faction
within the Party, and shared some ideological convictions that had been found
in the prewar Endecja, which regarded the Jew as the major threat to Poland and
its people.¹⁰ Thus, the Partisans saw any emphasis on the Jewish Holocaust as
a threat to the concept of ethnic Polish wartime martyrdom and suffering. This
in turn led to the replacement of the official narrative of “parallel” fates of Poles
and Jews with a more radical narrative of “equal” fates. A good illustration of
this process is the 1968 censoring of an article on Nazi concentration camps that
had appeared two years previously in the eighth volume of the prestigious Wielka
Encyklopedia Powszechna (Great Universal Encyclopedia). The editors of the orig-
inal 1966 article had maintained a clear distinction between the extermination
camps in which almost all victims were Jews, and concentration and labor camps

10 Endecja—National Democratic Party was the widely supported prewar nationalist

movement, whose leader, Roman Dmowski, is known as the father of Polish ethnic nationalism.
Endecja was characterised by anti-Jewish policies and practices.
72 Joanna Michlic

where many prisoners were (ethnic) Poles. In the Partisans’ amended version the
distinction had completely vanished.
The Partisans’ narrative of the equal fate of Poles and Jews represents a par-
ticular competition over suffering, continuing in the strongly self-defensive posi-
tion taken in the debate over Neighbors. Historian Witold Kula was perhaps the
first Polish intellectual to reflect critically on this competition. In 1970, Kula wrote
the following in his diary: “In the past the Jews were envied for their money, qual-
ifications, positions and international contacts—today they are envied for the
very crematoria in which they were incinerated.”¹¹
The Partisans constructed another narrative as well—that of the assault on
Polish martyrdom by the West and Jews—expressed by the cry of “anti-polo-
nism.” Critical reports on the Polish treatment of its Jewish minority did indeed
appear in the Western media in the 1960s, some of which presented a distorted
and sensationalist image of Poles as “eternal antisemites” and “accomplices” to
the Nazi genocide of Jews. Unsurprisingly, these biased accusations provoked
highly defensive reactions among Poles both in émigré circles and within the
country. The Partisans manipulated these reports in order to portray the entire
West as anti-Polish and to suppress inquiries into the dark past. The strategy was
pursued and further developed over the following two decades by various other
political and social groups and individuals as well.
The Partisans also constructed anti-Jewish narratives whose purpose was
to present Poles in a praiseworthy light vis-à-vis Jews, while promoting specific
themes such as Polish Jews’ lack of gratitude toward Poles who had assisted
them; the anti-Polish behavior of Jews during the war; and Jewish passivity in the
face of the genocide—including the controversial theme of collaboration with the
Nazis. As with the charge of anti-polonism, the anti-Jewish narratives continued
to be used and would be further developed as time went on.
Given the fact that the Partisan faction managed to obtain control over large
segments of the national mass media, institutions of national heritage, and edu-
cation in the late 1960s, their version of the Holocaust had considerable influence
on public attitudes as well as on the writing of history. Michael Steinlauf asserts
that by the late 1960s, the Holocaust had been “expelled” from public memory.¹²
With all its inaccuracies, distortions, and omissions, the dominant canon did
serve in Polish collective memory as a source of knowledge about the Jewish geno-
cide and the behavior of Polish society during the war. Any challenge to it was of
course suppressed by the Communist regime right up to the 1980s. Furthermore,

11 Witold Kula, Dziennik, cited in Zaremba, “Urząd,” 72.

12 Steinlauf, Bondage, 75–88.
 The Jedwabne Debate: Reshaping Polish National Mythology 73

there were few voices in Polish émigré circles that pursued such an attempt to
reevaluate the past. It was only in the new socio-political climate of the 1980s that
attempts began to crystallize as part of the process of Poland’s rediscovery of its
Jewish minority—a process initiated by the first Solidarity movement.

The Impact of Jan Błoński

In the 1980s, a number of voices, ranging from left-wing Solidarity circles to the
progressive Catholic intelligentsia, began to openly question the dominant trend
of remembering the Holocaust.¹³ In the name of political and social necessity,
they rejected any notion of equality or symmetry between the suffering of Poles
and Jews, and in both official and underground publications raised the issue of
the Poles’ moral accounting for the Holocaust and the country’s painful past.
Initially, some of their voices went unnoticed, while others evoked emotional
and intensely negative reactions. The dynamics and outcome of the first public
debate that followed publication of Jan Błoński’s essay, “The Poor Poles Look at
the Ghetto” (1987), demonstrated the persistence of the prevailing Polish attitude.
In his groundbreaking article, Błoński raised difficult questions about the
“insufficient concern” of Poles about the fate of Jews during the Holocaust,
arguing that in part it was the result of widespread anti-Jewish feelings in the
prewar period. He suggested that the Poles had difficulty in reexamining their
wartime relations with the Jews because they saw themselves as the primary
victims of the German occupation, and were unable to acknowledge that they,
too, were capable of wrongdoing.

When we consider the past, we want to derive moral advantages from it. Even when we
condemn, we ourselves would like to be above—or beyond—condemnation. We want to be
absolutely beyond any accusation, we want to be completely clean. We want to be also—and
only—victims.¹⁴

Błoński’s position was rejected by most of the two hundred individuals who
participated in the debate. Similarly, criticism was voiced by members of polit-
ical and cultural elites from widely differing ideological backgrounds, ranging
from official Communist circles to right-wing Solidarity factions. Błoński and the

13 On the memory of the Holocaust and Jews in Poland in the 1980s, see Iwona Irwin-Zarecka,
Neutralizing Memory. The Jews in Contemporary Poland (New Brunswick, N.J., 1989.
14 Jan Błoński, “The Poor Poles Look At The Ghetto” (in English), Polin 1 (1989), 326–28.
74 Joanna Michlic

editors of Tygodnik Powszechny (in which the article was published) were accused
of playing into the hands of Poland’s enemies and of endorsing anti-Polish pro-
paganda. A number of individuals called for Błoński to be prosecuted under the
Polish criminal code for “slandering the Polish nation.”
The political transformation of 1989–1990, which led to Poland regaining
full sovereignty, did not seem to effect much change in the general attitude. This
was evident in the outcome of the first major debate on the Holocaust triggered
by Michał Cichy’s article “Poles and Jews: Black Pages in the Warsaw Uprising,”
published in Gazeta Wyborcza in 1994.¹⁵ Reactions differed little from those sur-
rounding Błoński’s article.
Another good illustration of the persistence of the dominant canon through-
out the 1990s was the dissemination of knowledge about the Holocaust in the edu-
cational system. An analysis of primary and secondary school history textbooks,
conducted by the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw in May 1997, showed that
the viewpoint remained the same as in the communist period.¹⁶
By the late 1990s, however, a small but increasing number of intellectuals,
including some historians, began to discuss less than flattering aspects of the
Polish past, and called for a critical reexamination of the dominant notions of
remembering.¹⁷ This counter-memory has since gained a more noticeable and
fixed place in intellectual discourse.

The Debate over Neighbors

The publication in May 2000 of the original Polish version of Jan Tomasz Gross’s
Neighbors marked the beginning of a fierce battle over public memory of the

15 See, Joanna Michlic, Poland’s Threatening Other. The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the
Present (Lincoln, Neb, 2006), 273–74.
16 Important articles on the representations of the Holocaust in history textbooks in Polish
schools of the 1990s were published in the Biuletyn Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego, no.
3/4 (1997). See also Hanna Węgrzynek, The Treatment of Jewish Themes in Polish Schools (New
York, 1998).
17 See, for example, Jan Tomasz Gross, Upiorna dekada (Kraków, 1998); Maria Janion, Do
Europy tak, ale razem z naszymi umarłymi (Warsaw, 2000); and Feliks Tych, Długi cień zagłady
(Warsaw, 1999). See also special issues of Więź entitled “Under One Heaven. Poles and Jews”
(1998); various articles in Więź (July 1999); and a special issue of Znak entitled “Shoah—pamięć
zagrożona?,” (June 2000).
 The Jedwabne Debate: Reshaping Polish National Mythology 75

Holocaust and wartime Polish-Jewish relations.¹⁸ Gross addressed the most

extreme aspect of the dark past by providing an in-depth description of a specific
case, which occurred in the small town of Jedwabne on July 10, 1941. In a set of
short socio-historical essays, he raises interrelated issues, such as the problem of
postwar Polish historiography of the wartime period, the question of responsibil-
ity for murder, and of the Poles’ self-image as victims.
The case of the massacre at Jedwabne raises important questions about
the thin line that exists between the desire to expel an unwanted minority, and
the perpetration of a small-scale genocide possible only under then-prevailing
wartime conditions. Further investigation into similar episodes in Poland and
other East European countries may help us to better understand the wider impli-
cations of the massacre. The public debate was the most intense about any histor-
ical issue in postwar and post-communist Poland. According to the well-known
Polish historian Marcin Kula, no other historical issue—not even the legacy of
communism—has generated a public debate of this scope.¹⁹ Moreover, the discus-
sion continued to reverberate in the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel,
and Germany as well.
The passionate national discussion came about as a result of three main
factors. First, Gross documented the case of the destruction of a particular Jewish
community, not by the Nazis, but by members of the Polish collectivity—that had
traditionally been assigned the position of bystander to the genocide of Jews.
Second, the narrative of the destruction exposes the reader to intimate details
of the personal histories of named individual victims. Gross’s mode of narration
was that of bearing witness to the Jewish victims of Jedwabne who, for so long
were remembered only by the few Jewish survivors of the massacre and by their
families. Third (and most importantly for the dynamics of the debate in Poland)
Gross challenged the traditional image of Poles as martyrs and heroes by showing
them as vicious killers engaged in acts of murder. Thus, Neighbors set out a clear
counter-memory to the accepted canon.
The debate can be seen as unique in many respects. Previous debates on
the Holocaust that took place in the 1980s and 1990s lasted just a few months,
whereas the debate over Neighbors continued with varying degrees of intensity

18 Jan Tomasz Gross, Sasiedzi. Historia Zaglady Zydowskiego Miasteczka (Sejny: Pogranicze,
2000). For reflections on Jewish reactions toward the Jedwabne massacre and Neighbors, see
Laurence Weinbaum, The Struggle for Memory in Poland. Auschwitz, Jedwabne and Beyond
(Jerusalem, 2001), 35–38.
19 Marcin Kula, “Refleksje na marginesie dyskusji o Jedwabnem” (unpubl. ms.). My thanks to
Prof. Kula for giving me this article. See also idem, “Ludzie Ludziom,” Rzeczpospolita, 17 Mar.
2001, A5.
76 Joanna Michlic

for several years. Earlier discussions were conducted within a limited number of
newspapers, whereas this one took place in a wide range of national and local
papers representing a variety of ideological profiles and social interests, as well
as in other media, including television, radio, and the Internet. It included the
broadcast on Polish Television Channel 2 of Agnieszka Arnold’s documentary,
“Neighbors,” and has been referenced in commemorative events, including
sermons of repentance and mourning for the Jewish victims.
More importantly, the debate on Neighbors was the first in which polit-
ical leaders took an active role, including then-Polish President Aleksander
Kwaśniewski.²⁰ It was also the first in which the voice of counter-memory is not
merely that of an individual but was also heard from leading cultural, political,
and religious leaders as well as the general public. These developments indicate
that the counter-memory of the Holocaust gained increased support within Polish
society, along with a loosening of the previous dominant ritual of remembrance.
Predictably, counter-memory allows for Polish self-criticism, whereas the
former patterns of remembrance took a defensive stance, with the more extreme
versions of it containing anti-Jewish narratives. Even the less extreme versions of
the defensive stance often contain an element of “yes, but....”
The self-critical position was mainly presented in well-known national dailies
such as Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita, and in two progressive journals of
the Catholic intelligentsia—the weekly Tygodnik Powszechny and the monthly
Więź. The strongly defensive position appeared mainly in Myśl Polska, Nasz Dzi-
ennik, Niedziela, Najwyższy Czas, Tygodnik Głos, and Życie.

The debate over Holocaust memory

The intense and ongoing debate undoubtedly brought the Holocaust to the center
of public attention.²¹ Among those willing to take a self-critical position, the

20 See, for example, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, “Polska szlachetność i polska hańba. Z

prezydentem Aleksandrem Kwaśniewskim rozmawiaja ks. Adam Boniecki i Krzysztof Burnetko,”
Tygodnik Powszechny, no. 1 (15 April 2001), 8–9; idem, “Co to znaczy przepraszam,” Polityka,
no. 28 (14 July 2001): 13.
21 The debate exposed the absence of unbiased educational tools on the Holocaust,
coinciding with discussion of the first and unbiased Polish textbook on the subject, written
by two high school teachers, Robert Szuchta and Piotr Trojański, who also devised the first
program for teaching the Holocaust in Poland. Accompanying the debate was an educational
seminar on the Holocaust for thirty teachers from the province of Podlasie, organized by the
 The Jedwabne Debate: Reshaping Polish National Mythology 77

Holocaust regained its historical relevance as an important chapter of 20th-cen-

tury history, with both universal and unique messages for humanity. There were
calls for the gradual integration of the genocide of Polish Jews within the narra-
tive of Polish history, and for the potential inclusion of the history of Poland’s
Jews into postwar collective memory. Polish sociologist Barbara Engelking and
Israeli historian Anita Shapira had earlier pointed to the absence of reference to
this important part of Polish history.²²
Moreover, the discussion of the massacre of the Jedwabne Jews raised the
more general issue of the emotional and moral distance of Polish society from the
Jewish genocide. For example, the Archbishop of Lublin, the late Józef Źyciński,
in his article, “The Banalization of Barbarity,” called for an expression of mourn-
ing and grief for the Jewish victims:

Today, we need to pray for the victims of the massacre, displaying the spiritual solidarity
that was missing at the hour when they left the land of their fathers.²³

One can argue that this long-awaited mourning did finally take place to some
degree, as seen by the participation of different political and social groups in
commemorative events for the Jewish victims of the Jedwabne massacre. One
might assume that this would lead, in the future, to a more open, sympathetic and
inclusive image of Polish Jews in Polish collective memory. Regrettably, the local
community of Jedwabne itself, encouraged by their parish priest, Rev. Edward
Orłowski, refused to take part in the official commemoration that took place there
on July 10, 2001, an indication of their inability to reckon with the town’s bloody
past. Instead, the townspeople reacted by clinging to and recycling the narratives
of the old version of remembrance often taking the extreme defensive position.²⁴

Institute of National Remembrance. See Adam Szostkiewicz, “Powiedzcie to synom” and Piotr
Pytlakowski, “Historia pewnego podręcznika,” both in Polityka, no. 16 (2001).
22 Barbara Engelking, Zagłada i Pamięć. Doświadczenia Holocaustu i jego konsekwencje
opisane na podstawie relacji autobiograficznych (Warsaw, 1994); Anita Shapira, “Holocaust:
Private Memories, Public Memory,” Jewish Social Studies 4, no. 2 (1998): 40–58.
23 Józef Życiński, “The Banalisation of Barbarity,” Więź, special edition: “Thou Shalt Not Kill”
(2001): 257.
24 On responses of the local Jedwabne population toward news of the massacre and toward
Gross’s book, see Anna Bikont, “My z Jedwabnego,” Gazeta Wyborcza, 23 March 2001, 10–15;
“Proszę tu więcej nie przychodzić,” Gazeta Wyborcza, 31 March–1 April, 2001, 10–12; and “Mieli
wódkę, bron i nienawiść,” Gazeta Wyborcza, June 15, 2001, 10–14. See also, Jarosław Lipszyc,
“Sąsiedzi i ich wnuki,” Midrasz, no. 6 (June 2000): 41–44; Stanisław Przechodzki, “Szatan
wstąpił do Jedwabnego,” Gazeta Wyborcza, 5 April 2001, 18; and Adam Wilma, “Broda mojego
syna,” Gazeta Pomorska, 4 August 2000.
78 Joanna Michlic

Even more disturbing was the presence of the strongly self-defensive position
along the entire spectrum of right-wing politicians and in what has been termed
the “closed” Catholic Church.²⁵ In this segment of the Polish population, the
Holocaust is still seen as constituting a major challenge to communal well-being,
as a means of undermining recognition of Polish martyrdom, and as the “ulti-
mate victimization of Poles by Jews.” Members of the self-defensive position have
frequently cited the Polish edition of Norman Finkelstein’s aggresively polemical
book, The Holocaust Industry, as if it were the authoritative work on the subject.²⁶
The terms “Holocaust business” and “Holocaust gesheft” have been incorporated
into the narratives that defend the old canon of remembrance and criticize Neigh-
bors.²⁷

The collective self-image of Poles

Gross’s presentation of Poles in Neighbors seriously undermined the cherished
self-image of Poles as being above all heroes and victims. Just such a deconstruc-
tion, Gross argued, is a necessary prerequisite for recreating a healthy sense of
Polish nationhood, which for such a long period hid the uglier aspects of its past
and thus lived a lie. The debate also brought forth angry reactions concerned with
defending Poland’s good name and blaming others for setbacks and difficulties.
Well aware that this collective defensiveness is not solely a Polish problem, Gross

25 See, for example, Antoni Macierewicz, “Oskarżam Aleksandra Kwaśniewskiego,” Tygodnik

Głos, no. 14 (17 April 2001); Klub Konserwatywny w Łodzi, “Stanowisko w związku ze sprawą
Jedwabnego” Tygodnik Głos (7 July 2001); Rev. Jerzy Bajda “Przepraszać? Kto kogo?” Nasz
Dziennik, 14 March 2001. Rev. Prof. Waldemar Chrostowski, “Kto utrudnia dialog? Rozmowa
Pawła Paliwody,” Życie, 10 April 2001.
26 For a critical analysis of Norman Finkelstein’s, Holocaust Industry, and his adoption by
antisemites, including in Poland, see Robert S. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession. Anti-Semitism
from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (New York, 2010). See also Jerzy Sławomir Mac, “Czerwona
podszewka. ‘Przedsiębiorstwo Holocaust’ to połączenie nazistowskiej i komunistycznej
propagandy,” Wprost, 23 Sept. 2001, 78–79.
27 For example, Bishop Stanisław Stefanek of Łomża, Bishop Józef Michalik and Rev. Edward
Orłowski of Jedwabne have all used the term “Holocaust business” in their sermons and
comments. Right-wing journalist Henryk Pająk also published a book entitled Jedwabne
Geszefty (Lublin, 2001), 2nd ed.
 The Jedwabne Debate: Reshaping Polish National Mythology 79

wrote that “like several other nations, in order to reclaim its own past, Poland will
have to tell its past to itself anew.”²⁸
In the self-critical camp, non-historian intellectuals, in particular, have
voiced support for forming a new self-image of Poles to include the warts along-
side the heroic and suffering past. As a leading figure in the progressive Catholic
intelligentsia, Jarosław Gowin, put it in his article “Naród—ostatni węzeł” (The
last strand of our nation), “We have the responsibility of passing on our heri-
tage to future generations: while passing on the memory of us as heroes is our
duty, passing on the memory of Polish crimes against others should constitute a
warning for the future.”²⁹
In her article “Zbiorowa wyobrażnia, wspólna wina” (Collective imagination,
common guilt), the psychologist Krystyna Skarżyska has described the psycho-
logical roots of the inability to reckon with the stained past and the ensuing neg-
ative consequences, and like Gross, called for a deconstruction of the dominant
collective self-image:

It is understandable that we experience psychological discomfort when our own commu-

nity is blamed for serious sins. An inclusion of cruelty towards others into national col-
lective memory is entirely in discord with one’s own self-image. Its acceptance is almost
impossible for people who are convinced that they have invariably been the victims and the
victims only…. What is urgently required is a debate on our collective memory and social
identity and an attempt at deconstructing our past self-image.”³⁰

Individual voices from the “Open Catholic Church” and members of political
parties such as the Union of Freedom (Unia Wolności) have also embraced this
call.³¹ In the case of the formerly communist Social Democratic Alliance (SLD),

28 Quoted from Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors. The Destruction of the Jewish Community in
Jedwabne Poland, English ed. (Princeton, N.J., 2001), 169.
29 Jarosław Gowin, “Naród-ostatni węzeł,” Rzeczpospolita, 18 January 2001.
30 Krystyna Skarżyska, “Zbiorowa wyobrażnia, wspólna wina,” Gazeta Wyborcza, 25–26
November 2000.
31 Representative of the Open Catholic Church are: Rev. Michał Czajkowski, “Czysta
Nierządnica. Dlaczego należy przepraszać za Jedwabne,” Tygodnik Powszechny, no. 21 (27
May 2001): 1, 5; Rev. Adam Boniecki, “Bronię księdza Michała,” Tygodnik Powszechny, no.
21 (27 May 2001), 4; Rev. Wojciech Lemański, “Chrystus w zgliszczach stodoły,” Więź (June
2001): 78–85; Rev. Stanisław Musiał, “Jedwabne to nowe imię Holokaustu,” Rzeczpospolita,
10 July 2001; Bishop Henryk Muszyński, “Biedny chrześcijanin patrzy na Jedwabne,” Tygodnik
Powszechny, Kontrapunkt, no. 1/2 (25 March 2001), 13. Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, “Prawda
Jedwabnego,” Wprost, 13 May 2001, 8. Among members of Unia Wolności who participated in
the debate were Jacek Kuroń and Henryk Wujec. Kuroń and Wujec, together with Rev. Michał
Czajkowski and Jan Nowak-Jeziorański, issued an appeal for active participation in prayers of
80 Joanna Michlic

its General Council in March 2001 issued a letter to its members and supporters
under the meaningful title: “We are not inheritors only of glory” (Dziedziczymy
nie tylko chwałę). Furthermore, Poland’s president, Aleksander Kwaśniewski,
also embraced the call, as seen in various pronouncements, including a speech
delivered on July 10, 2001 at the official state ceremony for the Jewish victims of
the Jedwabne massacre, in which he said:

Thanks to the great national debate on the crime of 10 July 1941, much has changed in our
lives in this year 2001, the first year of the new millennium. We have come to realise our
responsibilities for our attitudes towards the black pages of our history. We have understood
that those who counsel the nation to reject this past serve the nation ill. Such a posture
leads to moral destruction…. We express our pain and shame and give expressions to our
determination in seeking to learn the truth. We express our courage to overcome the bad
past and our unbending will for understanding and harmony.³²

Another aspect of the Polish self-image that has been challenged has been the
widely-held notion of the Poles’ historic toleration and hospitality toward its
ethnic and national groups.³³ The major deconstruction, however, has occurred
in studies of Polish-Jewish wartime relations. The prevailing narrative of Polish
solidarity with its Jewish citizens has been shown to be untruthful.³⁴ The new
narrative that incorporates the blacker pages of Polish history in World War II is
one of the most important achievements of the debate.
Judging by opinions expressed in letters and Internet discussions that have
been published in Gazeta Wyborcza, Polityka, Tygodnik Powszechny and Wprost,
the counter-memory of Polish-Jewish relations has found acceptance among the
general population, particularly among young people.³⁵ Polls conducted both
before and after the official July 10, 2001 commemoration indicated that many

repentance in Jedwabne on July 10. The appeal was published in Tygodnik Powszechny, no. 16
(22 Apr. 2001): 5.
32 This is a fragment from the official speech by Aleksander Kwaśniewski on July 10, 2001 at
the commemoration in Jedwabne; published in Gazeta Wyborcza, 10 July 2001.
33 See, for example, Janusz A. Majcherek, “Ciemne karty polskiej historii,” Tygodnik
Powszechny, Kontrapunkt, no. 1/2 (25 Mar. 2001): 16.
34 See, for example, Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, “Obsesja niewinności,” Gazeta Wyborcza, 13–14
January 2001, 22–23; idem, “Nasz człowiek w Pieczarach. Jedwabne: pamięć nieodzyskana,”
Tygodnik Powszechny no. 13 (31 Mar. 2002), 1, 4.
35 According to opinion polls conducted by Pentor, among Poles between 15 and 25 years
of age, 23.3 percent of respondents stated that they felt “satisfaction that the truth about
the massacre of the Jedwabne Jews was revealed and that the victims were honorably
commemorated.” On the whole, 68 per cent of respondents felt that the revelation of the
participation of Poles in the murder was an important event; Wprost, 22 July 2001, 26.
 The Jedwabne Debate: Reshaping Polish National Mythology 81

segments of society are still uncertain about accepting the dark past as an intrin-
sic element of the collective self-image. Furthermore, the polls indicated signifi-
cant confusion over the issue of who the perpetrators of the Jedwabne massacre
actually were.³⁶ This confusion resulted largely from the representation of the
massacre by the nationalist camp, which claimed the act had been committed by
Germans. Data from the forensic investigation of the massacre by the Institute of
National Remembrance, chaired by Prof. Leon Kieres, was manipulated in order
to press this view. For example, the first reports about the discovery of German
bullets at the main site, where a partial exhumation of human remains was carried
out at the end of May and beginning of June 2001, was heralded as definitive evi-
dence of German culpability. Later analysis showed that the bullets had come
from completely different historical periods.³⁷ Simultaneously, anti-Jewish narra-
tives—particularly those alleging Jewish collective support for the Soviet regime
between September 1939 and 1941 and in the postwar period—have been used
as a strategy to minimize and justify the massacre. A fusion between the thesis
of German involvement in the Jedwabne crime and the narrative of “Judeo-com-
munism” has led to a disturbing revisionist interpretation of the Jewish geno-
cide. Jedwabne’s parish priest, Rev. Edward Orłowski and Senator Jadwiga Sto-
karska of Łomża Province maintained that the Germans killed the Jews because
of their Communist affiliation and because the Jews had been fighting against the
Germans on behalf of the Soviet Union.³⁸
In the self-defensive camp, Neighbors was dismissed as “a lie and an attempt
to slander the good name of Poland,” and yet another Jewish (or Jewish-Ameri-
can) conspiracy against Poland as well as confirmation that the Jew always wants
to harm the Pole.³⁹ Even those nationalists who are capable of acknowledging

36 According to an opinion poll conducted by CBOS in August 2001, 28 percent of respondents

stated that only Germans/Nazis were responsible for the massacre of the Jedwabne Jews;
12 percent stated that a few Poles together with the Germans participated in the massacre;
4 percent stated that the Poles were forced by the Germans to commit the massacre; 8 per
cent stated that only Poles were responsible for the massacre; and 30 per cent were unable to
say who was responsible. Report of CBOS (Warsaw, 2001). I would like to thank Prof. Andrzej
Paczkowski for giving me a copy of the report.
37 See “New Evidence of A Polish Massacre,” BBC NEWS, 19 December 2001.
38 Jadwiga Stokarska, “Kampania oszczerstw,” Nasz Dziennik, 19 March 2001, and Edward
Orłowski “Niech zwycięży prawda. Conversation of Rev. Pawel Bejger with Rev. Orłowski,”
Tygodnik Młodzieży Katolickiej “Droga,” 13 March 2001.
39 See, for example, Leon Kalewski, “Opowieści niesamowite. Part 1 and 2” Nasza Polska,
21 November 2000 and 19 December 2000; Jerzy Robert Nowak, “Kto fałszuję historię,” Nasz
Dziennik, 13 May 2000; Piotr Gontarczyk, “Gross kontra fakty,” Życie, 28 February 2001; and Jan
Engelgard, “Antynarodowa histeria,” Myśl Polska, 30 March 2001.
82 Joanna Michlic

the role of Poles in the crime, still find it hard to accept the image of Poles as vil-
lains, and tend to focus on the more positive narratives of Polish solidarity with
its Jewish citizens.
What prevents them from accepting a more honest and balanced image? One
explanation is the strong commitment to preserving Poland’s national honor and
reputation.⁴⁰ Adherents of the strongly self-defensive position display a similar
commitment to Poland’s honor, but add anti-Jewish prejudice as well. It is not
always easy to differentiate between the mildly and strongly defensive positions.⁴¹
Why does the self-image of Poles as heroes and victims hold such power in the
collective memory? The image has enjoyed a long-established history in Polish
collective self-awareness ever since the first half of the 19th century. Rooted in
the romantic national myth of Poles fighting for their own and others’ freedom,
it played an important political and social role throughout the long era in which
Poland was partitioned and Poles struggled for independence. During the Second
World War, this image became a powerful mirror for Polish society and that
war—as in no other period in modern history—reinforced the dual sense of being
heroes and victims. It nourished a justifiable pride in Polish resistance, both in
the armed struggle against the Nazis, and the preservation of underground social
and political institutions. The Poles did, after all, suffer high human losses—an
estimated 5–7 per cent of the ethnic Polish population died as a result of the war.
One can also argue that the war itself was perceived as the embodiment of
Polish collective martyrdom and heroism. Hence, any meaningful investigation
of Polish attitudes and behavior toward its Jewish minority in that period cannot
be easily tolerated. The heroic self-perception exerted a powerful hold during the
postwar communist period, especially at its end, when it was transformed into
the image of Solidarity fighting the Communists.⁴² With this background in mind,
we can better understand the present difficulty in accepting the massacre of Jews
in Jedwabne as an integral part of the Polish collective self-image.

Several conclusions can be drawn from this analysis. The debate on Neighbors has
been interpreted in opposing ways that can basically be described as “optimistic”

40 On the positive correlation of national honor and reputation and the lack of collective self-
criticism, see, Irwin-Zarecka, Frames, 8–82.
41 In his short typology of different positions within the debate, the distinguished Polish
historian Andrzej Paczkowski was the first to indicate that in some cases the borders between
the positions are not clearly defined; see Andrzej Paczkowski, “Debata wokół “Sąsiadów”:
próba wstępnej typologii,” Rzeczpospolita, no. 71 (24 March 2001).
42 On the perception of the Second World War in public memory in the 1980s and 1990s, see
Tomasz Szarota, “Wojna na dobre samopoczucie,” Gazeta Wyborcza, 6 September 1996.
 The Jedwabne Debate: Reshaping Polish National Mythology 83

and “pessimistic.” Optimists have given particular attention to the development

of the self-critical aspect, and have come to view it as a cathartic discussion that
must change the Polish way of remembering the Holocaust, Polish-Jewish rela-
tions, and the Polish self-image of the wartime period.⁴³ In their opinion, the
debate put an end to the taboo subject of Polish-Jewish relations. Pessimists, on
the other hand, noted the strength of the self-defensive position which attacked
Gross’s book “as anti-Polish lies aiming at the extortion of billions of dollars from
hapless Poles.” They concluded that the dynamics of the debate confirmed the
firm grip of the past over the present and the consequent inability on the part of
Polish society to undergo a process of modernization of its mentality. This view
assumed that the case of Jedwabne would soon be forgotten by the public and
“anti-Semitism will become part of the daily norm of life.”⁴⁴
These two interpretations, however, do not give a realistic picture of the
changes occurring within Polish society, but were, rather, expressions both rea-
sonable expectations and hopes, as well as understandable disappointment.
The debate was both a reflection and part of the process of the democratiza-
tion of Polish political and social life, which could not have taken place imme-
diately after the country regained full sovereignty with the overthrow of Com-
munism.⁴⁵ It also mirrored the reemergence of two competing models of Poland.
One is that of a pluralistic civil society inclusive of the memory of the “others”
that make up Polish society, which was able to acknowledge wrongdoing done
by Poles. The second is an ethnocentric model that excludes the “other” and nur-
tures the narrative of the unique suffering of ethnic Poles. In the past, the plural-
istic model had been underdeveloped and underrepresented in political culture,
but it is now gaining greater legitimacy. The ethnic model dominated postwar
Poland for many decades and is still popular among right-wing political elites
and in the Closed Catholic Church.
Adherents of the pluralistic civil concept of Poland refer to the Jew as the
“Polish Jew,” “our co-citizen,” and “co-host of this land”—an important change in
the public discourse.⁴⁶ By contrast, among adherents of the ethnocentric model,

43 See, for example, Krzysztof Darewicz, “Debata o Jedwabnem zmieni Polaków,”

Rzeczpospolita, 2–3 May 2001, 3; and the comments of Marian Turski cited by Tony Wesołowski
in “Jedwabne, Poland,” Christian Science Monitor, 18 April 2001.
44 See the editorial opinions in the discussion published in the high quality cultural-social
journal ResPublica Nowa: Marcin Król, Paweł Śpiewak, and Marek Zaleski, ResPublica Nowa, no.
7 (July 2001).
45 Ewa K. Czaczkowska, “Byłem sam, będą nas setki,” Rzeczpospolita, no. 159 (10 July 2001).
46 See Polityka no. 26 (30 June 2001): 88, for the remarks of Leon Kieres about Polishness and
Jewishness.
84 Joanna Michlic

the Jew is still referred to as “the Jew”—a term, which in this context has the neg-
ative connotation of standing in opposition to the Pole. One cannot understand
the dynamics and meaning of the debate without taking into account these two
contesting concepts. Both can be viewed as different mediums of transmission of
the memory of the Holocaust and of the Polish collective self-image, or, as repre-
senting two contesting memories.⁴⁷
At present these two memories can be viewed as still running in parallel. Yet
the fact that the counter-memory has been endorsed by some of the leading rep-
resentatives of the political and cultural elites and by the Open Church raises
the likelihood that it will continue to play an increasingly greater role in shaping
public memory.
In his remarks on public memory of the Holocaust in Poland between 1989
and 1995, Michael Steinlauf posited the unpredictability of what Poles might do
with the memory of the Holocaust, and of how this memory might shape Polish
history and consciousness.⁴⁸ Still, he expressed the hope that this memory
“would be used in the service of renewal rather than repression.” The dynamics
of the debate over Neighbors suggests that a renewal has definitely taken place,
but one also accompanied by repression. Only time will show if this repression
will become a marginal phenomenon.

47 I borrow the term “medium of transmission of memory” from the leading sociologist of
memory, Maurice Halbwachs, who contends that memory is an activity deeply affected by its
medium of transmission; Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory (New York, 1980).
48 Steinlauf, Bondage, 144.
Simon Epstein
Roger Garaudy, Abbé Pierre,
and the French Negationists
The Roger Garaudy affair, was the most famous of the cases of negationism in
France in the 1990s. It boosted Garaudy to the rank of chief propagator of denial of
the Shoah, following in the footsteps of Paul Rassinier, who made himself known
in the 1950s, and Robert Faurisson, whose hour of glory came in the 1980s. In
addition, the Garaudy affair marks the point of intersection between negationism
and a particularly virulent anti-Zionism. For both of these reasons—its place in
the history of negationism in France and its “anti-Zionist” specificity—this affair
deserves to be examined in detail, in all its phases of development. Central to
such an analysis is the somewhat unusual biography of the chief protagonist.
Born in 1913 to a working-class family, Roger Garaudy was first tempted by
Protestantism before becoming a Marxist in 1933. A teacher of philosophy at the
secondary school in Albi, in the Tarn, he became an active militant in the ranks of
the French Communist Party (PCF). He was arrested in September 1940 and trans-
ferred to the detention camps of the Vichy regime in Southern Algeria. Elected
to the French Parliament after the war, he progressed through the Communist
hierarchy and became one of the intellectuals most representative of, and loyal
to the PCF. Director of the Center of Marxist Studies and Research (CERM) from
1959 to 1969, he addressed himself to promoting dialogue between Marxists and
Christians. He sought to prove that Communism was compatible with humanism,
in compliance with the “politics of openness” advocated by Maurice Thorez, the
Communist leader.
Garaudy’s connection to the Jews began during World War II. While interned
in the Algerian camps, he met Bernard Lecache, then President of the Interna-
tional League Against Antisemitism (LICA), and became his friend. In 1948, in the
name of the French intellectuals, Garaudy laid a bouquet of flowers on the tomb
of Jewish revolutionary Gaston Crémieux, in the Jewish cemetery of Marseilles.¹
In a speech in Paris, in 1951, he condemned “those who burned innocents in the
ovens of the crematoria.”²
His rejection of antisemitism was intensely expressed twenty years later,
especially from 1968 to 1970, when Garaudy broke ranks with the French Com-
munist party and got himself thrown out by its executive organs. His disagree-

1 “Marseilles rend hommage à la mémoire de Gaston Crémieux,” Droit et liberté, 1 July 1948.
2 “Puissante manifestation antiraciste à la Mutualité,” Droit et liberté, 30 Mar. 30–5 Apr. 1951.
86 Simon Epstein

ment with Communist leadership mostly had to do with Party strategy in France
after May 1968, and his concern over Soviet repression in Czechoslovakia. In the
series of anti-Establishment speeches and writings in which he exposed his point
of view, he repeatedly raised the question of antisemitism in Eastern Europe.
In April 1968, before the Central Committee of his Party, he also denounced the
honors awarded in the Soviet Union to the anti-Jewish pamphleteer Kitchko. He
took up the same theme in a letter to the Political Bureau in September of the
same year. He spoke out on the question of antisemitism in Poland, which burst
out in the spring of 1968 in response to the Six Day War and as a result of the
student agitation which shook the Polish universities. His remarks were based on
an appeal signed principally by Aragon and Jean-Paul Sartre, which proclaimed
that “under the pretext of anti-Zionism, a new antisemitism has been developing
for the last several months in Poland, with the support of at least some of its
leading circles.” He also evoked the question of the rights of Soviet Jewry.³
The Communist Party journal, l’Humanité, accused him of “revisionism” in
the sense of deviation from Marxist orthodoxy and the official Soviet line. Garaudy
expressed himself for the last time before his comrades at the 19th Congress of the
French Communist Party, on February 6, 1970. Facing a silent and hostile audi-
ence, he mentioned yet again, among the last criticisms which he was to make of
the Communist system—the “anti-Zionist” antisemitism in Eastern Europe.⁴ His
speech was rebroadcast on television, which gave his parting words a particularly
dramatic resonance. He was expelled shortly thereafter, putting an end to what
the French press of the time labeled the “Garaudy affair”⁵ and which—as we now
know—was only the first of several “Garaudy affairs.”
Let us dwell for a moment on these two important elements of his biogra-
phy. Garaudy, during the 1950s, had mentioned the “ovens of the crematoria” in
his speeches. And Garaudy, between 1968 and 1970, rose up against antisemi-
tism disguised as anti-Zionism. Indeed, less than two months after his famous
speech of February 1970, he even took a trip to Israel, at the invitation of the Tel
Aviv Museum. He met with several leftist personalities. He declared that he had
detected, in the Jewish State, “a wish for peace, a desire for a political solution.”
His ideological non-conformism and his positions against antisemitism gained

3 Roger Garaudy, Toute la vérité (Paris, 1970). The references to antisemitism in Poland or the
USSR appear on pp. 10, 53, 63, 125–35.
4 Ibid., 65.
5 Michèle Cotta, “Affaire Garaudy,” L’Express, 25 May 1970; see also the inquiry by Jean-
François Kahn in the same issue.
 Roger Garaudy, Abbé Pierre, and the French Negationists 87

him the approval of his Israeli interlocutors.⁶ Garaudy, during his visit, played
an unknown but very important role in the internal politics of the state of Israel:
he tried to organize a meeting between Nahum Goldman, the head of the World
Jewish Congress and the World Zionist Organization, and Gamal Abdul Nasser, the
Egyptian president. Golda Meir, then prime minister of Israel, strongly opposed
the idea and refused to allow Goldman to meet Nasser. As a consequence, the pro-
posal came to naught. Historians are well aware of this proposal and the debate
it generated, but no one is aware that the original suggestion came from Roger
Garaudy.⁷
Garaudy’s search for spirituality gradually led him to a “progressive” social
Catholicism; later, disappointed by Christianity, he converted to Islam in the early
1980s, taking the first name of “Raja.” His switch to Islam was accompanied by a
tumble into absolute anti-Zionism, precipitated by the Lebanon War and the siege
of Beirut by the Israel Defense Forces in the summer of 1982. In 1983, he pub-
lished L’Affaire Israël (The Israel affair), which constitutes one of the most violent
attacks against the Jewish State ever disseminated in France. His grievances
were aimed not only at the policies of Israel’s government—which he accused of
murderous imperialism—but at Israeli society and the fearsome “racism” raging
through it. Seeking the origin of the structural flaws of the State of Israel, Garaudy
lambasted the Zionist movement for both its ideological principles and its politi-
cal strategies. As for the constituent defects of Zionism, he claimed their sources
lay in the “biblical myths” on which Jewish tradition was founded.⁸ Garaudy was
to develop that question of the organic bonds which lead from the biblical Jewish
past to the present-day “criminal” policy of Israel in another work, La Palestine
[Palestine], published three years later.⁹
The first Gulf War (January–February 1991) bolstered his anti-Zionist radical-
ization, pushing Garaudy into an antisemitism which he barely tried to conceal.
He had already begun to approach the New Right by the end of the 1980s; in
March 1991, he participated in a colloquium held by GRECE [Research and Study
Group for European Civilization, a think-tank of far Right intellectuals].¹⁰ He also

6 Maurice Politi, “A bâtons rompus avec Roger Garaudy,” L’Information d’Israël, 3 Apr. 1970.
7 Roger Garaudy, Mon tour du siècle en solitaire. Mémoires (Paris, 1989), 326–27; Nahum
Goldman, Autobiographie (Paris, 1971), 362–63; Maariv, 6 Apr. 1970, 7 Apr. 1970, 8 Apr. 1970,
9 Apr. 1970.
8 Roger Garaudy, L’Affaire Israël (Paris, 1983).
9 Roger Garaudy, La Palestine, Terre des messages divins (Paris, 1986).
10 On Garaudy’s ties with the New Right: Yves Camus and René Monzat, Les Droites nationales
et radicales en France (Lyon, 1992), 75, 262, 269.
88 Simon Epstein

contributed to a magazine called Nationalisme et République, one of the main

forums of the French antisemitic ultra-right.
At that point, Garaudy was ready for his Mythes fondateurs de la politique
israélienne (Founding myths of Israeli politics), which he published for the first
time (as a special, privately printed issue of a magazine) at the end of 1995. Its
publisher was Pierre Guillaume, whose bookshop and publishing house, La
Vieille Taupe (The old mole), was one of the most solid and stable bastions of
negationism in France. The ideology supported by Guillaume and his ultra-left
colleagues, in the 1960s and 1970s, was based on the assumption that the crimes
of the Nazis could not have been worse (and were undoubtedly of less impor-
tance) than the crimes committed by the liberal democracies or the Soviet Union
during World War II or at any other moment in history. This axiom led far Leftists
in France to the writings of Paul Rassinier, the pioneer of postwar negationism.
They published their own texts and provided fervent and unfailing support to
Robert Faurisson and to other negationist authors.¹¹ By publishing his book with
La Vieille Taupe, Garaudy left the domain of exacerbated anti-Zionism and of
barely camouflaged antisemitism, making an official entry into the negationist
nebula.
He left La Vieille Taupe after publishing the updated edition of his text in
March 1996—a slightly sweetened version, which he distributed as self-published
“samizdat.”¹² The prestigious label of “samizdat” is, of course, a symbol of oppo-
sition to totalitarian thought which persecutes all those who dare contest the
established truth with regard to Zionism or genocide. The intent was both to com-
plicate the task of suppression by the courts and to promote public interest in the
book and further its distribution.
The book begins with a protestation of innocence. Like many supporters of the
Jews who switch over into antisemitism, Garaudy evoked the pro-Jewish phases
of his course of life. He mentioned his friendship for Bernard Lecache when they
were both interned in camps in Southern Algeria. He recalled the courses they
had presented together for their companions in captivity, which discussed “the
greatness, the universality, and the liberating power” of the Hebrew prophets.¹³

11 On the negationism of La Vieille Taupe, Pierre Guillaume, and his ultra-left friends:
Valérie Igounet, Histoire du négationisme en France (Paris, 2000), 188–98, 248–93, 457–88.
This study provides a wealth of information and analyses on multiple aspects of French
negationism. It is, however, more limited with regard to the Garaudy affair.
12 Roger Garaudy, Les mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne (Roger Garaudy, Samizdat,
1996).
13 Ibid., 10.
 Roger Garaudy, Abbé Pierre, and the French Negationists 89

His reasoning is not easy to follow, because the text is tangled and very
poorly articulated. Garaudy knows how to write; he knows how to compose a
book; he has published a very large number of works on a variety of subjects. But
his Founding Myths is badly edited and poorly organized. Nonetheless, in the dis-
orderly profusion of facts and quotations which pile up from one page to the next,
it is possible to distinguish three major sets of arguments, each of which con-
stitutes part of his book: an absolute anti-Zionism, heading very quickly toward
antisemitism; an undeniable negationism; and a furious anti-Israelism, which is
also nourished by the most classic anti-Jewish stereotypes.
His pathological anti-Zionism is founded on a ferocious (to say the least) crit-
icism of biblical Judaism. Garaudy became a Catholic, and then a Muslim, but
his book shows him as a materialistic atheist, weaving the Bible into some of his
essential topics. Monotheism, he explains, does not belong to the Jews alone, but
can be found in multiple forms in the Middle East and other parts of the world.
Accordingly, the Jews cannot avail themselves of their status as the Chosen
People, nor claim any divine promise in their favor.¹⁴ His reflections are based on
scientific rationalism, which he applies to the constituent dogmas of the Jewish
faith, but which he would be very cautious about applying with the same rigor to
the dogmas of Islam, or even those of Christianity.
On the other hand, many of his assertions rest on a literal reading (rather
than a critical analysis) of the biblical text. Garaudy no longer contests the valid-
ity of the account; he no longer invokes historical context; he no longer questions
the dates; he no longer compares Jews with other peoples or other periods. What
he does, at this point, is to revile the massacres which the Hebrews committed
during their wandering in the desert and when they came into Canaan. After
citing references to biblical battles from the holy text, Garaudy launches into
the incessant crimes of which he currently accuses the Israelis.¹⁵ In doing so, he
establishes a double bond of causality and continuity between the carnage of yes-
teryear and that of today. The suggestion is that the Jews are a cruel and bloody
people by nature: they were that way a long time ago, against the poor Canaanites,
and they are so, once again, in the twentieth century, against the unfortunate Pal-
estinians. The latter, who are the legitimate descendants of the Canaanites, thus
have to suffer (for the second time in three millennia!) the dreadful conquest of
their country by the abominable Jews—total strangers in Palestine who have no
business being there.

14 Ibid., 43–47.
15 Ibid., 55–57.
90 Simon Epstein

In the course of these “historico-theological” pages, Garaudy crosses the line

which separates his anti-Zionism, unbridled as it may be, from antisemitism. It
is true that, in all his questions, he does no more than take up or amplify themes
already developed in his previous books, The Israel Affair and Palestine. Garaudy,
in Founding Myths is not engaged in innovation but in plagiarizing himself.
Negationism itself, which did not appear in the earlier books was, however,
the subject of the central part of his book. In a first chapter of this second part,
entitled “The Myth of Zionist Anti-Fascism,” Garaudy drew his inspiration from
the literature of the extreme Left, which claims there was “collaboration” between
the Zionist leaders and the Nazis; the quotations he uses are those habitually
called into service by this type of writing. Suddenly, in the flood of quotations
which seek to demonstrate that the Zionists collaborated with Fascists and Nazis,
Chaim Weizmann (President of the World Zionist Organization) appears, declar-
ing war on Germany in 1939!¹⁶ This so-called “declaration of war” has already
been abundantly studied. We know it plays a leading role in negationist reason-
ing, because it enables an explanation of why the Nazis, out of legitimate self-de-
fense, were forced to mistrust the Jews and hold them hostage. Garaudy, in this
passage, mixed up two systems of reference. Like the extreme anti-Zionist (but
not negationist) Left, he attempts to prove that the Zionists did nothing against
Fascism. At the same time, he raises the argument that Weizmann had declared
war on the Nazis and that the latter, faced with such a threat, absolutely had to
defend themselves. The incompatibility of these two themes is evident. It leads
Garaudy to accuse the Zionists of having been partners in the “extermination” of
the Jews of Europe, and then to explain that this mass murder never took place
and is no more than a myth disseminated by those same Zionists.
In the other chapters in the section concerning World War II, Garaudy used
all the arguments and citations to be found in negationist literature. He criticized
the Nuremberg trials for their victors’ justice, their asymmetry (German crimes
are judged, but not those of the Allies), their irregularities (the confessions were
obtained by torture). Most of all, he reproached the Allies for having invented
the “myth” of the six million exterminated Jews with a view to charging defeated
Germany with an absolute crime exceeding anything known by humankind up to
that time.
Garaudy endorsed the classic negationist scenario, according to which the
Nazi intention was to deport the Jews to the East for forced labor, but not to exter-
minate them. He denied that the testimonies of survivors were of any value and,
of course, manipulated the statistics on the victims. He summarized the basic

16 Ibid., 66–67.
 Roger Garaudy, Abbé Pierre, and the French Negationists 91

negationist theses concerning the nonexistence of the gas chambers. Attacking

the “myth of the six million,” Garaudy evoked all the victims of the war, placing
particular emphasis on the bombardment of Dresden and the destruction of Hiro-
shima. He also dwelt on the victims of European colonialism throughout con-
temporary history. Having added up all those dead, he expresses his indignation
at the Jews’ attempt to seek a privileged status for their particular suffering by
fraudulently inflating the number of their deceased and inventing extermina-
tion systems which never existed outside their imagination. The term “genocide”
seemed excessive to him as a description of what the Jews went through during
World War II. At the same time, he thought it perfectly appropriate to present as
genocide what the Jews did to the Canaanite populations in Biblical times.¹⁷
The third part of his book, like the first, resembles his former writings on the
“Jewish question” and on Zionism. He reviled the State of Israel from all possi-
ble angles, in its domestic politics and relations with the Arab world in general
and the Palestinians in particular. He attacked the “world Zionist lobby,” paying
special attention to two of its poles—American and French Jewry. Garaudy shows
how the American Jews “control” the media and the political life of their country,
enabling them to promote policies which run counter to American interests, while
at the same time managing to transfer considerable funds to the State of Israel.
Garaudy then takes on the “Zionists” in France. They, too, are masters of the
media and of politics. They use their power to terrorize those who, like Garaudy
himself, have dared to challenge their might or to denounce the myths on which
they build their power and through whose strength they intend to keep it. Let us
add that his apocalyptic description of “Zionist” domination of the United States
and France is accompanied by two pages which, written in an indignant hand,
refute the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.¹⁸ Garaudy thus succeeds in this tour de
force which consists of adhering to the direct logic of the Protocols, while at the
same time denying their authenticity.
The first publication of this text by La Vieille Taupe did not immediately make
waves. Aside from a very brief article in the Monde des livres in January 1996, the
book went virtually unnoticed.¹⁹ Meanwhile, however, legal proceedings were
launched against Garaudy, under the “Gayssot” Law of July 1990 which prohibits
the questioning of crimes against humanity and thus enables a legal response
to negationism. This judicial action, combined with the spectacular rallying of

17 Ibid., 151–67.
18 Ibid., 249–50.
19 “Roger Garaudy négationniste,” Le Monde, 26 Jan. 1996.
92 Simon Epstein

Abbé Pierre, was to launch one of the most resounding affairs in the history of
negationism in France.
Like Garaudy, Abbé Pierre (Henry Grouès) is a former “friend” of the Jewish
people. He was a member of the Résistance during World War II and has repeat-
edly recalled how he helped persecuted Jews to slip across the Swiss border. He
several times expressed his rejection of antisemitism and racism. Speaking in
1949 at a meeting of support for the State of Israel, he observed that “for him,
the Resistance began the day when, at the cathedral of Grenoble, the police came
in to track down people whose only offense was to have been born in the Jewish
faith.” He described his first clandestine crossing of the border, in an effort to save
Jews. He concluded that “anyone who asks me to come and speak for liberty, for
the survival of a people, may be sure that I will answer the call.”²⁰ As a Member
of Parliament for the MRP (Popular Republican Movement, a reformist Christian
Democratic party) in Meurthe and Moselle, he spoke out on questions of antisem-
itism.²¹ His support for Zionism and for the young State of Israel was unfailing.
Thus, in December 1948 he participated in a meeting organized by the French
League for a Free Palestine, an organization linked with the nationalist-right
Irgun Zvai Leumi (Etzel).²² He was one of the Catholic Members of Parliament
who supported Israel on the question of the holy places in Jerusalem.²³
Abbé Pierre had first become famous around 1954 for his public campaigns
in the war on poverty. The general prosperity of the 1960s and early 1970s took
the urgency out of his campaigns which seemed anachronistic and out of step
with the growing affluence during the years of economic growth. The shock of the
two consecutive oil crises (1974 and 1979), as well as the reappearance of unem-
ployment and poverty which characterized the 1980s, rehabilitated the virtues
of philanthropic militancy, especially on behalf of the homeless. His “compan-
ions of Emmaus” were to enjoy new-found fame in a French society once again
threatened by misery and destitution. His warm personality—that of a simple and
devoted man—was to transform him into an adored symbol of human fraternity
and solidarity in a capitalist society pitiless toward the weak, the unfortunate,
and the outcasts within it. Let us add that Abbé Pierre always expressed opposi-
tion to the extreme Right and the National Front of Jean-Marie Le Pen.

20 “Dans un puissant meeting, Paris exprime sa solidarité avec Israël en lutte pour son
indépendance,” Droit et Liberté, 1 Feb. 1949.
21 See also his letter on the subject of a local matter of antisemitism in Droit et Liberté, 30
June 1950.
22 David Lazar, L’Opinion française et la naissance de l’Etat d’Israël 1945–1949 (Paris, 1972),
135–36.
23 Ibid., 190–91.
 Roger Garaudy, Abbé Pierre, and the French Negationists 93

Abbé Pierre was thus at the height of his popularity when he came to the aid
of Garaudy, whom he had known and esteemed for 50 years. He spoke out in favor
of freedom of expression, as Noam Chomsky had done in the Faurisson affair.
He also took a stand on a much more fundamental level, citing the “biblical”
massacres. In a letter dated 15 April 1996, he expressed confidence in his friend
Garaudy and saluted his “astonishing, brilliant and scrupulous erudition.” He
stated his hope for a great debate with “real historians” on the questions raised.
He then went on to express some strange considerations on the Jews, mentioning
the Book of Joshua and the “Shoah” which the Jews had supposedly wrought in
Antiquity against other peoples of the region. Abbé Pierre attacked the wrongs of
Jewish particularism, while admitting that the policy of the Church with regard
to Judaism had some share in the syndrome.²⁴ Abbé Pierre’s letter of support,
brought to the attention of the public in a press conference skillfully orchestrated
by Garaudy’s lawyer, Jacques Vergès, gave rise to a far-ranging polemic.²⁵
Abbé Pierre, a member of the Honors Committee of the International League
Against Racism and Antisemitism (LICRA), came to the headquarters of that orga-
nization on April 24 to explain himself. In a tense atmosphere, he admitted that
he had not read the incriminated text, pleading fatigue and his advanced age;
nonetheless, he declared that his confidence in Garaudy was unchanged. More
than anything else, he expressed his hope that a debate would be held on certain
points of history—a statement which indirectly echoed the negationists. They had
always demanded an open confrontation between two “schools of history”—that
which claimed that the gas chambers existed and that which doubted it. Thus,
while proclaiming his affection for the Jews, Abbé Pierre nevertheless supported
debate on the “issues” raised by Garaudy.²⁶
In an interview several days later, he persisted in his refusal to dissociate
from Garaudy and made equivocal comments on what he called the “question

24 Text reproduced in Roger Garaudy, Droit de réponse. «Le lynchage médiatique de l’Abbé
Pierre et Roger Garaudy» (Roger Garaudy, Samizdat, 1996), 29–32.
25 Nicolas Weill, “L’Abbé Pierre soutient les aberrations négationnistes de Roger Garaudy,”
Le Monde, 20 Apr. 1996; also Nicolas Weill, “L’Abbé Pierre confirme son soutien aux thèses
négationnistes de Roger Garaudy,” Le Monde, 21–22 April 1996. The Swiss essayist Jean Ziegler
and Fr. Michel Lelong also lent their support to Garaudy, but quickly withdrew it. Jean Ziegler’s
retraction, Le Monde, 23 Apr. 1996; Fr. Lelong’s retraction in a letter to Le Monde, 5–6 May
1996.
26 Nicolas Weill, “Le recul de l’Abbé Pierre sur son soutien à M. Garaudy est jugé ambigu par
la LICRA,” Le Monde, 26 Apr. 1996. Nicolas Weill was later to publish a very interesting account
of the evening of April 24 at LICRA: Une Histoire personnelle de l’antisémitisme (Paris, 2003),
95–101.
94 Simon Epstein

of the gas chambers.” He corrected himself at once, however; the next day, in a
communiqué, he stated that he “[did] not by any means intend to leave in doubt,
for any reason whatsoever, the atrocious reality of the Shoah and the millions
of Jews exterminated because they were Jews.” He mentioned that he had saved
Jewish lives during the war and that he “firmly condemn[ed] all those who, for
various reasons, wish, in any manner whatsoever, to deny, falsify or trivialize the
Shoah, which will always remain a blot of indelible shame in the history of our
continent.” Still, he spoiled his profession of faith by indicating that he main-
tained his confidence in Garaudy, who, he said, was committed to “admitting
any error which would be proven to him.” That last sentence, harmless though
it may have looked, had the effect of wiping out the force of the rest of the com-
muniqué that could have saved him, because it transferred the burden of proof
to Garaudy’s adversaries. His retraction was accordingly considered insufficient
and unacceptable by the leaders of LICRA. On May 1, he was expelled from the
Honors Committee of the anti-racist association.²⁷
This multiplicity of contradictory and confused statements bears witness
to the intensity of the internal drama which Abbé Pierre, under pressure from
several different directions, was experiencing. It is also symptomatic of the tor-
tuous path from philosemitism to antisemitism. In historical perspective, Abbé
Pierre was actually no more than the latest avatar in a long line of militants
belonging to LICRA (or LICA, as it was formerly known) who crossed the line
and turned toward antisemitism. As for Garaudy, a friend of the founder of LICA,
congratulated by the Jews for his denunciation of antisemitism in 1968–1970, he
came from the same camp, as it were, and followed a similar path.
The Jewish community responded forcefully. Henri Hajdenberg, President of
the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF), firmly voiced
the official protest of the Jewish community in France, while making contact with
the Catholic hierarchy. The writer Marek Halter was concerned about a “poor
man’s negationism, this sort of jealousy which results in all the damned of the
earth, of all times, having a problem with the Jews, who monopolize empathy.”
Serge Klarsfeld, for his part, wondered about Abbé Pierre’s claim to have saved
Jews during the war: “The declarations which he has just made authorize us to
demand clarifications on the exact role which he could have played during the
war with regard to saving Jews. We can wonder whether he did save Jews.” In
much the same vein, Antoine Spire spoke out about an inquiry which he had

27 Michel Castaing, “L’Abbé Pierre retire son soutien aux thèses de Roger Garaudy,” Le Monde,
2 May 1996; “L’Abbé Pierre a été exclu du comité d’honneur de la LICRA,” Le Monde, 3 May
1996; “L’Abbé Pierre ne fait plus partie de la LICRA,” Le Droit de vivre (Jan.–May 1996): 12–13.
 Roger Garaudy, Abbé Pierre, and the French Negationists 95

made some ten years before, showing that Abbé Pierre had invented a role as
a Résistance member much more prominent than that which he had played in
reality.²⁸
Le Canard enchaîné (one of the first papers to denounce the publication of
Garaudy’s book) proceeded in its own way—that is, with humor. It imagined a
negationist logic, applied in 2050, on the question of knowing whether Abbé
Pierre really existed. True, there were photographs, but nothing is easier to falsify
than a photograph. As to the number of homeless, it should naturally be regarded
with caution: certain figures spoke of 400,000, others of 200,000. Such a gap
obviously constituted proof that no homeless persons ever existed. Using ridicule
to combat the phenomenon, the article exposed the intrinsically absurd nature of
negationist reasoning by applying it to subjects other than the Shoah, and espe-
cially those dear to the negationists themselves or their friends. The same issue
of the satirical journal launched a violent attack on “Roger-la-Honte” (Roger-the-
shame), taking wicked pleasure in recalling that Garaudy, a Communist intellec-
tual of the early 1950s, was one of those who had denied with fervor the existence
of the Soviet camps.²⁹
Bernard Kouchner, in an open letter addressed to Abbé Pierre, noted that
Garaudy, throughout his life, had always supported the worst oppressors: Stalin
in the Soviet Union, Qaddafi in Libya, Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and that “his
lifeline, like a downward slope, inclines toward the worst.” Kouchner was a close
friend of Abbé Pierre, and the two had even published a book together in 1994.
He now invoked that friendship in order to demand that Abbé Pierre get a grip on
himself and part company with Garaudy.³⁰
Pierre Vidal-Naquet, a left-wing Jewish historian of renown, also spoke out.
His writings had dealt a blow which, if not fatal, was at least quite severe, to the
popularity of Robert Faurisson’s theses in the early 1980s. This important work,
Les assassins de la mémoire (The assassins of memory, 1987), had the effect of
dismantling the internal mechanism of the revisionist “method.” Vidal-Naquet
showed no mercy for Garaudy, who “was always a specialist in never-mind-
what,” having converted “first to Protestantism, then to Communism, then to
Catholicism, then to Islam. This is not exactly an example of intellectual stabil-
ity.” Vidal-Naquet cited a few examples of the grave errors which abounded in

28 On the Jewish community reactions, see Tribune juive, 9 May 1996, 16–19.
29 Frédéric Pagès, “L’Abbé Pierre a-t-il vraiment existé?” and Patrice Lestrohan, “Roger-la-
Honte,” Le Canard enchaîné, 30 Apr. 1996.
30 Bernard Kouchner, “Mon père, je t’écris ces mots parce que j’ai un devoir d’affection,” Le
Monde, 30 Apr. 1996.
96 Simon Epstein

Founding Myths, calling it “an oppressive book, made up of frightening historical

misunderstandings.” He evoked the ultra-leftist intellectuals who, following Paul
Rassinier, fed French negationism with their writings. He severely criticized Abbé
Pierre, for the support which he lent to Garaudy and no less for his aberrant ref-
erence to the biblical Joshua’s “Shoah.” Going on to cite the demagogy of Le Pen
and the extreme Right, he expressed his fears that the “position taken by Abbé
Pierre will open the floodgates of antisemitic pressure.”³¹
This brings me to Florent Brayard’s impressive first book, which was a study
on Paul Rassinier, one of the dominant figures among the first generation of
French and other negationists.³² The appearance of his book in 1996 coincided
with the uproar of the Garaudy-Abbé Pierre affair. As a specialist on the history of
Holocaust denial, Brayard explained that “revisionist production, since its origin,
has swung back and forth between paucity and the most dishonest falsification,”
He said that Garaudy had done no more than to line up quotations borrowed from
the works of his predecessors in negationism, like a parrot who “also forgets to
indicate whose phrases it repeats.” Garaudy’s compilation

well illustrates the stick-in-the-mud nature of revisionist discourse: Rassinier, who created
it, was also the first to repeat himself relentlessly, followed by Faurisson repeating Rassinier
repeating himself. The zealots of that ideology, in turn, repeated and are still repeating what
Rassinier and Faurisson said.

Brayard went on to contrast the scientific ineptitude of the revisionists’ discourse

with the public relations effectiveness of their strategy. The “revisionists” were
actually seeking to provoke public scandals, preferably accompanied by judicial
repression, which would enable them to plead their cause in the name of freedom
of expression and conscience. Such “affairs” gave rise to irrational doubts which
could only be to their benefit: this was the “revisionist trap” denounced by Bra-
yard.³³
The “set-up” theory regarding the shaping of public opinion was also exposed
by historian Philippe Videlier. After having drawn a parallel from the antisemi-
tism of Drumont’s day and the Dreyfus affair to present-day negationism, he
revealed the tactics adopted by the staff of La Vieille Taupe in order to publicize
Garaudy’s work and ensure maximum distribution. He also demonstrated the

31 François Bonnet and Nicolas Weill, “Pierre Vidal-Naquet analyse les relais dont disposent
les négationnistes,” Le Monde, 4 May 1996.
32 Florent Brayard, Comment l’idée vient à M. Rassinier. Naissance du révisionnisme (Paris,
1996).
33 Florent Brayard, “Le piège révisionniste,” Le Monde, 31 May 1996.
 Roger Garaudy, Abbé Pierre, and the French Negationists 97

links which since the early 1990s had tied Garaudy to the extreme Right.³⁴ More-
over, other inquiries had succeeded in identifying, in the immediate entourage
of Abbé Pierre, ultra-leftist militants who had incited him to take a public stand
in Garaudy’s favor. These were former members of the Italian Red Brigades, who,
having tired of their terrorist activities of the 1970s, had faded back into France.
Having infiltrated Abbé Pierre’s vast network of institutions, they now occupied
important administrative and managerial functions. Their influence on Abbé
Pierre, according to Eric Conan, was considerable.³⁵
Self-replicating as always in times of crisis, the debate on the strategy to use
in dealing with the negationists became even more fierce, focusing on the issue
of legal restraints on the proliferation of denial. A hostile position towards the
Gayssot Law was expressed by historian Madeleine Rebérioux, Honorary Presi-
dent of the Ligue des droits de l’homme [League for Human Rights]. She consid-
ered that the general anti-racist law passed in 1972 was powerful enough to repress
antisemitism, whereas a specific action under the Gayssot Law would have the
effect of transforming the negationists into martyrs and sowing “rampant doubt”
in people’s minds.³⁶ Simone Weil agreed that the law “lets the negationists appear
as martyrs, victims of an official truth. Thanks to it, the negationists will be able
to drive the debate on freedom of expression off course.”³⁷ Although some critics
of the law came from a liberal background, most originated in the extreme Right,
which—for easily comprehensible reasons—had never stopped fighting the law
since the day of its enactment. Communist parliamentarian Jean-Claude Gayssot
and former Communist Senator Charles Lederman, who had drafted the law,
responded by insisting that the 1990 law was an extension of the anti-racist law
passed in July 1972. It was intended, like any legislation of that type, to protect
“society against the intolerance and inhumanity which constitute the systematic
construction of racism, antisemitism and xenophobia.”³⁸
Support for Abbé Pierre and Garaudy was by no means negligible. It came, for
example, from the ranks of the National Front, whose leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen,
had already announced his “revisionist” view on the “details” of the history of
World War II. The National Front press based its campaign on freedom of speech
and the universal right to expose ideas to the general public. This support was not

34 Philippe Videlier, “Nouvelle affaire négationniste. Zones d’ombre et coup monté,” Le

Monde diplomatique (June 1996).
35 Eric Conan and Sylviane Stein, “Ce qui a fait chuter l’abbé Pierre,” L’Express, 2 May 1996.
36 Madeleine Rebérioux, “Contre la loi Gayssot,” Le Monde, 21 May 1996.
37 Interview with Simone Weil in L’Evénement du Jeudi, 27 June–3 July 1996.
38 Jean-Claude Gayssot and Charles Lederman, “Une loi contre l’antisémitisme militant,” Le
Monde, 26 June 1996.
98 Simon Epstein

unanimous among the splinter groups which held a neo-Nazi ideology further
to the right than Jean-Marie Le Pen. Some of them reproached Abbé Pierre for
the “hatred” which he had supposedly shown many years ago for the Alsatians
enlisted in the Waffen SS. Others accused him of having retreated before the
anti-negationist wave in the media.³⁹
The Church, for its part, was at a loss. It certainly took a firm stand early
in May 1996 in a statement issued by the office of the Episcopal Committee for
Relations with Judaism. The Committee rejected “the very grave confusion and
the scandal which result from the support thus expressed” by Abbé Pierre for
Garaudy. “The fact that the extermination took place is uncontested; it truly was
genocide, because men, women, children and old people were condemned to
death. The gas chambers existed and the Nazis used a coded language to conceal
their heinous crime,” the statement continued, concluding that “for all these
reasons, we regret and deplore Abbé Pierre’s undertaking to support Mr. Garau-
dy.”⁴⁰ The use of the word “deplore,” rather than a stronger and more appropri-
ate word such as “condemn” or “denounce,” reveals the uneasiness felt by the
Episcopal Committee at the thought of totally breaking away from Abbé Pierre.⁴¹
Another sign of discomfort lay in the fact that Cardinal Lustiger, the archbishop
of Paris, waited until mid-June 1996 before launching a public accusation against
Abbé Pierre. This gave the latter a rather long reprieve, which was probably
intended to grant him an opportunity to correct himself. Still, we must note that,
tardy as it may seem, Cardinal Lustiger’s reaction was categorical and unambig-
uous.⁴²
Garaudy, throughout this period, did not remain inactive. In June 1996,
he published a brief work entitled Droit de réponse (Right of response), which
denounced the “media lynching” of which he claimed that he and Abbé Pierre
had been the victims.⁴³ His work repeats, in summary form and in a style meant to
be clear and easy to read, the principal themes set forth in Founding Myths. It men-

39 On this subject, the information set forth by Jean-Yves Camus in Tribune juive, 9 May 1996.
40 “L’Eglise doit s’interroger sur ses responsabilitiés,” Le Monde, 2 May 1996; also Henri
Tincq, “La hiérarchie catholique ne veut pas être entraînée dans la polémique suscitée par
l’abbé Pierre,” Le Monde, 30 April 1996.
41 One illustration of this discomfort: Jacques Gaillot, “Lettre à l’abbé Pierre,” Le Monde, 26
Apr. 1996.
42 Henri Tincq, “Mgr. Lustiger adresse un blâme public à l’abbé Pierre et dégage la
responsabilité de l’Eglise. L’archevêque de Paris dénonce une attaque contre Israël et les juifs”
Le Monde, 21 June 1996.
43 Roger Garaudy, Droit de réponse. “Le lynchage médiatique de l’Abbé Pierre et Roger
Garaudy” (Roger Garaudy: Samizdat, 1996).
 Roger Garaudy, Abbé Pierre, and the French Negationists 99

tions the “collaboration of the Zionist leaders with Hitler” and “Israeli terrorism”
and laments the fact that these questions, although abundantly addressed in his
book, had not become the object of any public debate. On the other hand, a ver-
itable “witch hunt,” set in motion by a powerful “Jewish lobby,” had ceaselessly
harassed him for “negationism,” and it was this defamatory accusation which
he insisted on opposing. His text recalled that he had been interned during the
war with Bernard Lecache, President of LICA, and that he had received the Medal
of Deportation. It then, however, returned to two crucial questions: the number
of victims, and the existence of the gas chambers. While angrily protesting the
accusations of negationism against him, Garaudy’s behavior was precisely that of
the negationists: excitedly denying that he was an antisemite, while expressing
doubts about the mass murder and the existence of the gas chambers; massively
reducing the number of assassinated Jews; and attributing the losses to the tribu-
lations of deportation, typhus epidemics in the camps, Allied bombardments, or
the unfortunate circumstances of war.
Garaudy’s work blasted the Zionists, accusing them of trying to downplay or
ignore the non-Jewish victims of Nazism. According to him, the book of Joshua,
was a major inspiration for Israeli policy. Typically, he becomes infuriated at a
journalist who dared to compare his book to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion:
had he not himself written, in a work published ten years before, a refutation of
“that ignoble forgery”? With his diatribe against the Protocols still ringing in our
ears, he hastens, one page later, to denounce “an extremely powerful lobby in the
United States” and “an extremely powerful lobby in France” for subjugating the
policies of both countries to the interests of the world Jewish community. Thus he
denies antisemitism even while nourishing it.
Garaudy would also invoke the great names in the struggle against antisem-
itism in order to turn them against the Jews. Thus, he makes two references to
Dreyfus.⁴⁴ The first is in the context of denouncing the international tribunal of
Nuremberg, which supposedly trampled the elementary rules of justice no less
severely than the judges who once condemned Alfred Dreyfus. On another occa-
sion, Garaudy castigated the “actual incitements to murder” launched against
the revisionists by their adversaries, “just as they had found no other way to
gag Dreyfus than by throwing him in prison.” Garaudy’s pamphlet includes two

44 This reference to Dreyfus seems to be a constant in Roger Garaudy’s work. In this way,
his book of 1970, which recalls his increasing clashes with the Communist Party, opens with
a quotation from the judges in the Dreyfus Affair, repeating that “the question will not be
asked....”
100 Simon Epstein

pieces of supporting testimony, one by a Protestant minister and the other by a

former deportee.
Abbé Pierre, meanwhile, had left France. Badly shaken by the inflammatory
polemic, he judged it preferable to withdraw to the Benedictine monastery in
Praglia, near Padua, Italy.⁴⁵ In the initial period of his stay in Italy, he unfailingly
persisted in his support of Garaudy, who even came to visit him at the monastery.
He publicly condemned an “international Zionist lobby” which was allegedly
exerting its influence on the Catholic Church in France.⁴⁶ In mid-June 1996, he
was still fulminating against Zionism, explaining how the infamous world lobby
was acting for the establishment of “the Empire proclaimed to Abraham,” which
was to extend from the Nile to the Euphrates.⁴⁷ “And what if Abbé Pierre was
right?,” asked enigmatic yellow and black posters put up in Paris in the second
half of June 1996.⁴⁸
Was this be “a victory for the revisionists,” as was pessimistically announced
in late June 1996 by L’Evénement du Jeudi? The weekly publication interviewed
Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Bernard-Henri Lévy, and Pierre-André Taguieff, who
expressed their distress at the support for the revisionists in public opinion.
According to one survey, 24% of the French were critical of Abbé Pierre, but 9%
approved of him, and 64%—no small number—continued to like him.⁴⁹
But then in July 1996, at a moment where the revisionists seemed to have
achieved an impressive success, Abbé Pierre, for one last time, astonished both
the protagonists of the affair and outside observers. After several weeks in Italy,
he decided to make honorable amends and devote himself to an unequivocal
retraction, unlike his confused earlier efforts. Noting that his words had been

exploited by currents which are playing dangerous games with the risks of antisemitism
and neo-fascism or neo-Nazism, which I have fought against and will always fight against,
I have decided to take back my words, accepting only the opinions issued by the Church
experts, and, asking the forgiveness of anyone whom I might have injured, I leave the
honesty of everyone’s intentions to be judged only by God.

45 “Ses compagnons veulent croire à un exil provisoire de l’abbé Pierre,” Le Monde, 31 May
1996.
46 Michel Castaing, “L’abbé Pierre s’en prend à un ‘lobby sioniste international,’” Le Monde,
2–3 June 1996.
47 “L’abbé Pierre met en cause le ‘mouvement sioniste,’” Le Monde, 19 June 1996.
48 Erich Inciyan, “Un mystérieux affichage de soutien à l’abbé Pierre,” Le Monde, 26 June
1996.
49 See the dossier published by L’Evénement du Jeudi, 27 June–3 July 1996.
 Roger Garaudy, Abbé Pierre, and the French Negationists 101

In a letter to Garaudy, supplementing his declaration to the press, he insisted that

his name no longer be linked, “in any way,” to his friend’s book.⁵⁰ Abbé Pierre
had abandoned the field and made a definitive retreat.

The viewpoint of Robert Faurisson

In the flood of words and writings inspired by the Garaudy–Abbé Pierre affair,
the most revealing reactions were those of Robert Faurisson, a leading figure of
French negationism. He followed the developments of the affair very closely,
with an understandable interest. He devoted several press releases to it when it
first broke out; he even published a detailed analysis of the entire crisis, entitled
“Bilan de l’affaire Garaudy-abbé Pierre, janvier–octobre 1996” (Balance sheet of
the Garaudy–Abbé Pierre affair, January–October 1996).⁵¹ These texts illustrate
common distinguishing factors between two categories of negationists, exposing
some of the tensions in the movement.
Faurisson had been upset from the very beginning. Garaudy, in the first
version of his text, had mentioned his name only once, “and not only that, but
[mentioned him] only as a professor who had been a victim of anti-revisionist
repression, but does not let us know exactly why: not one book, not even one
article by that professor is mentioned.” The section of Founding Myths which
refers to World War II, while certainly “inspired by revisionism,” was far from
pleasing him. “Those 75 pages were written in haste; they are composed of dis-
jointed pieces; the account is rather disconnected; omissions abound, and there
are even errors,” he wrote, with no compassion for the author or empathy for the
book.⁵² Faurisson also noted that his name had completely disappeared from the
second edition of Founding Myths—the “samizdat” edition. This concealment,
complained Faurisson, was even more significant because “the original text had
been revised in such a way as to attenuate its revisionist nature.”⁵³ Faurisson was
painfully aware of having been plagiarized, because the contestation of the gas
chambers presented by Garaudy had been “entirely taken from my own writings,

50 “L’abbé Pierre retire ses propos sur le livre de Roger Garaudy,” Le Monde, 24 July 1996.
51 Faurisson’s documents on the affair are reproduced in Robert Faurisson, Ecrits
révisionnistes (1974–1998), vol. 4: De 1993 à 1998, privately printed edition.
52 Ibid., 1804–1805.
53 Ibid., 1806.
102 Simon Epstein

including citations!”⁵⁴ This was the reason behind his refusal to provide Pierre
Guillaume with an “important document” (its content unrevealed) that Garaudy
needed for his polemic: “I am answering him by stating that his client has no
other option but to ask me for the document himself.... I am expressing to him
my astonishment at having been treated that way and at not even having received
a copy of Founding Myths. I am informing him that, as he knows, the revisionist
part of that book is no more than a compilation of my own writings.”⁵⁵
When he learned that Abbé Pierre was lending his support to Garaudy, Fau-
risson responded with a communiqué which reflected an obvious lack of enthu-
siasm for those who, “for the last few months, have been flying to the aid of the
revisionist victory.” He went on to deplore the fact “that it was necessary to wait
for 1996 to see those people realizing what should have been blindingly clear to
the entire world since 1979: the imaginary genocide of the Jews, principally per-
petrated by means of the supposed Nazi gas chambers, is no more than a historic
lie.” He mistrusted the newcomers, saying that he was waiting for them “to claim
that they had not said what they said, that they had not written what they wrote:
I am waiting for those people to give themselves over to the more popular senti-
ments of anti-Nazism (what courage!).” He concluded by recalling the principles
of revisionist orthodoxy: “I find that those people’s statements are continually
beside the point. We must call a spade a spade: this genocide and these cham-
bers are a deception.” Naturally, he ended his communiqué on an anti-Jewish
note: “I will add that, if I were Jewish, I would be ashamed to think that, for more
than half a century, so many Jews have propagated or allowed the propagation
of such a deception, with the support of the leading media throughout the entire
world.”⁵⁶
Faurisson was accordingly not surprised to see Garaudy and his lawyer
issuing declarations which rejected Nazism and negationism. He had no indul-
gence for Abbé Pierre’s “multiple acts of contrition” or “protestations of good
faith.” Faurisson was especially annoyed that Abbé Pierre felt it necessary to pub-
licly distance himself from his own pioneering work.⁵⁷ For all these reasons, he
felt both “happy and bitter.” “I am happy because I see trendy people subscribing
to what I have worn myself out repeating for almost quarter of a century,” he ini-
tially explained. “But I also feel bitterness because, for 22 years, those people and
their friends either insulted me or let me fight alone or nearly alone,” and espe-

54 Ibid., 1760.
55 Ibid., 1809.
56 Ibid., 1759–60.
57 Ibid., 1808–1809.
 Roger Garaudy, Abbé Pierre, and the French Negationists 103

cially because “those eleventh-hour actors, Garaudy and Abbé Pierre, are also
giving themselves over to the more popular sentiments of anti-Nazism.”⁵⁸
On the margins of the Garaudy affair, Faurisson allowed himself to make
some general comments on the French revisionists. In an epic proclamation, he
wondered “how, at the end of the day, a handful of men and women, succeeded
in breaking a leaden silence imposed upon the entire world by the richest, most
powerful and most severely feared group of the entire West? This group is the
Jews.”⁵⁹ He then sent a warning to Garaudy and Abbé Pierre, reminding them
that “the Jews never forgive the least transgression of their taboo. Excuses, retrac-
tions, explanations, flatteries will constitute no reparations for the offense com-
mitted against them. They will be merciless. They will strike even harder against
anyone who, even for an instant, has bowed before them.”⁶⁰
He was accordingly not astonished to see his prediction come true, when
Abbé Pierre published his definitive retraction in July 1996, and when Garaudy
declared that he had distanced himself from negationism while admittedly con-
tinuing to propagate it. “It is regrettable that Roger Garaudy and Abbé Pierre did
not show more courage. The moment the media tempest in France began to rise
against them, they began to beat a retreat.... We will hold no grudge against them.
We must keep the violence of these times in mind; the strongest stand in fear of
them [the Jews]; how much more so should men of their age [fear them].”⁶¹
Faurisson’s epilogue on the entire affair adopts a tone which is at once con-
descending, morose and fatalistic: “Two octogenarians, who thought they knew
life and humankind, suddenly discovered, with childlike surprise, that, in reality,
their past existence was a rather facile one. Both of them, within a few short days,
were forced to pass an exceptional test: the one to which Jewish organizations
habitually subject persons who have the misfortune of arousing their wrath.”
Faurisson then held forth on the Jews who, out of “ancestral reflex,” involve in
their struggle all the media under their control. Faurisson expanded on Jewish
hatred, calling it “inextinguishable” and “one of the most formidable of all.” It
was quite a normal thing, he said, for Garaudy and Abbé Pierre, each in his own
way and under such pressure, to have “cracked” under the test.⁶²
Faurisson has often proclaimed his belief in the final victory of revisionism,
but he knows the struggle will be long. His outburst against “Jewish hatred” con-

58 Ibid., 1764–65.
59 Ibid., 1763.
60 Ibid., 1764.
61 Ibid., 1804.
62 Ibid., 1820–21.
104 Simon Epstein

firmed, however, that the great majority of French society in the mid-1990s was
not prepared to follow Garaudy or Abbé Pierre down the negationist path.
Garaudy did not, in fact, “crack” or abandon his theses. His 1998 trial was to
arouse a new wave of polemics. He was charged with “complicity in contesting
crimes against humanity” and “incitement to racial discrimination, hatred and
violence.” Garaudy did admit to the Correctional Chamber of Paris that he was
hostile toward Zionism, but not toward Judaism. He even stated that he favored
“the unity of the three Semite religions.” He also explained why the quotes from
Rassinier and Faurisson in the first edition of his book (December 1995), had
disappeared from the second (March 1996): “I did not want to shift the focus
of this book. It was translated in 23 different countries. I did not think I should
encumber it with names unknown outside France.”⁶³ The debate centered on the
definition of the “Final Solution” and the question of the gas chambers. “I saw
death pass before my eyes when I was interned in the Sahara, but I never had
the idea of building a business on my grandfather’s bones,” Garaudy insisted,
while pouring scorn on the anti-racist organizations.⁶⁴ The latter, he said, were
stressing the negationist, and not just the “anti-Zionist,” nature of his writings.⁶⁵
His counsel, Jacques Vergès, criticized the Gayssot Law, which “claimed to freeze
History, whereas History is in a state of perpetual revision.” Vergès denounced
the primacy accorded to the genocide of the Jews, relative to all of the other geno-
cides, and compared his client’s trial to a witch-hunt.⁶⁶
In the verdict handed down on 27 February 1998, the court rejected the
charge of incitement to racial violence or hatred, which constituted half a victory
for Garaudy. On the other hand, with regard to negationism, the court ruled that
“Roger Garaudy gave himself over to a virulent and systematic contestation of the
very existence of the crimes against humanity committed against the Jewish com-
munity, borrowing liberally, in order to do so, from what the abundant revisionist
literature had already published on the subject.” Garaudy was sentenced to pay
relatively heavy fines.⁶⁷

63 Acacio Pereira, “M. Garaudy comparaît pour ‘complicité de contestation de crimes contre
l’humanité,’” Le Monde, 10 Jan. 1998.
64 Idem, “Roger Garaudy ‘doute’ toujours de l’existence des chambres à gaz,” Le Monde,
11–12 Jan. 1998.
65 Idem, “Une amende de 150,000 francs est requise contre Roger Garaudy,” Le Monde, 17 Jan.
1998.
66 Idem, “Les défenseurs de Roger Garaudy s’attaquent à la loi Gayssot,” Le Monde, 18–19
Jan. 1998.
67 Idem, “Le philosophe Roger Garaudy est condamné pour contestation de crimes contre
l’humanité,” Le Monde, 1–2 Mar. 1998.
 Roger Garaudy, Abbé Pierre, and the French Negationists 105

The coverage of the trial by Le Monde gave rise to an interesting semantic

debate which centered on the way in which Garaudy should be defined. The title
of a first article, which referred to him as an “anti-Zionist philosopher,” provoked
a riposte by several renowned intellectuals.

The use of the euphemism “anti-Zionist” in your title is a distortion of meaning, just as
the title of “philosopher” seems improper for Mr. Garaudy’s work. You have made a choice
which calls journalistic ethics into question, a choice with particularly grave political
effects. Intellectual honesty is first and foremost a question of vocabulary.⁶⁸

The polemic was strengthened when it became clear that Le Monde was persisting
in its attitude when it announced the sentenced passed against the “philosopher
Garaudy.”⁶⁹ Robert Redeker, a philosopher himself and member of the editorial
board of Temps modernes, spoke out in turn. He denied that negationism was a
philosophy, because it was, in fact, “intellectual banditry.” Accordingly, Garaudy
should have been called a “negationist ideologue” and not a “philosopher.”⁷⁰
Garaudy replied by protesting against his “excommunication from philosophy”
and inserted himself, on his own authority, into the category of Galileo, Einstein,
and Descartes.⁷¹
In his efforts to justify his Founding Myths and to establish that he was neither
a negationist nor an antisemite, he filed an appeal. The second trial was opened
on 14 October 1998, before the Court of Appeals in Paris. Alain Finkielkraut, the
sole witness called by the anti-racist organizations, demonstrated the negation-
ism shown by Garaudy, who “republishes the arguments in whose name the
Jews were killed.... There is nothing more offensive than to evict the survivors
from their misfortune and the dead from their death.” Garaudy claimed to have
received a letter of support from renowned violinist Sir Yehudi Menuhin in July
1998 and basically repeated the essentials of his earlier arguments.⁷² He did so in
vain: the Court of Appeals did not merely confirm the verdict handed down in Feb-
ruary. It increased the sentence, giving Garaudy six months’ suspended imprison-

68 See the letter “Détournement de sens” signed by Elisabeth de Fontenay, Alain Finkielkraut,
Henri Raczymov, Jacques Tarnero, and Michel Zaoui in the “Letters from Readers” section
of Le Monde, 1–2 Feb. 1998. See also Thomas Ferenczi, “Des titres malencontreux,” ibid.
The headline referred to was “Le philosophe antisioniste Roger Garaudy reçoit le soutien de
journaux arabes,” Le Monde, 13 Jan. 1998.
69 See note 67.
70 Robert Redeker, “Roger Garaudy est-il un philosophe?,” Le Monde, 13 Mar. 1998.
71 “Une lettre de Roger Garaudy,” Le Monde, 7 Apr. 1998.
72 Nicolas Weill, “Jugé en appel, Roger Garaudy persiste à défendre, à la virgule près, les
thèses de son livre contesté” Le Monde, 16 Oct. 1998.
106 Simon Epstein

ment on top of his fines. His publisher, Pierre Guillaume, was also found guilty
and sentenced.⁷³ Garaudy, indefatigable, went on to pursue his fight against the
courts, but his sentence was confirmed by the Cour de Cassation (Superior Court
of Appeals) in September 2000. He then turned to his last recourse—the European
courts—but again without success.
Rejected by French public opinion and condemned by French justice,
Garaudy was nonetheless fêted and enthusiastically flattered in the Arab world,
where his “anti-Zionist” and negationist writings were particularly appreciated.
As early as 1996, he toured Syria and Jordan and other Arab countries to present
his book. Visiting Egypt in October 1996, he was appointed an honorary member
of the Federation of Writers. His arrival, of course, was exploited by the intellec-
tual and political forces which were campaigning against the normalization of
relations between Egypt and Israel.⁷⁴ His 1998 trial was marked by a new flurry
of supportive testimony in the Arab world. The Association of Palestinian Writers
expressed its “solidarity with the thinker and man of letters Roger Garaudy for
his courageous struggle in favor of creative freedom.”⁷⁵ The Islamic movement in
Israel viewed his trial as part of a vast conspiracy by world Jewry against Islam.⁷⁶
Triumphantly received at the International Book Fair in Cairo on 15 February
1998, he stated, in the same breath, that he was not an antisemite and that “95%
of the Western media” were “controlled by the Zionists.”⁷⁷ Many Arab journals
expressed their support of him. “The months of January and February [1998] were
particularly auspicious for the former theoretician of the French Communist Party,
who had converted to Islam. From Cairo to Teheran, from Damascus, Amman,
and Beirut, to the autonomous Palestinian territories, Abu Dhabi and Tripoli, the
mobilization in his favor was surprising,” reported Mouna Naim. Iranian leaders
expressed fury at the attitude of the Westerners, who reproached them for perse-
cuting Salman Rushdie for his Satanic Verses, yet put Garaudy on trial. Only a few
rare voices in the Arab world distanced themselves from the massive support lent
to the Founding Myths.⁷⁸
The impact of Garaudy’s declarations and trial was deep, and constituted
part of the tendency toward demonization of the State of Israel and the Jewish

73 “La condamnation de Roger Garaudy est alourdie en appel,” Le Monde, 18 Dec. 1998.
74 On his tour of Egypt in October 1996, see “Local Hero,” Jerusalem Report, 14 Nov. 1996.
75 Acacio Pereira, “Le philosophe antisioniste Roger Garaudy reçoit le soutien de journaux
arabes,” Le Monde, 13 Jan. 1998.
76 Haaretz, 20 Jan. 1998.
77 “Roger Garaudy reçu en héros en Egypte,” Le Monde, 16 Feb. 1998.
78 Mouna Naim, “Critiqué, jugé, sanctionné pour ses theses en France, l’ancien théoretician
de PC est décoré et louangé dans les pays arabes,” Le Monde, 1–2 Mar. 1998.
 Roger Garaudy, Abbé Pierre, and the French Negationists 107

people over the past fifteen years—a tendency which has only gained in strength
since October 2000. Garaudy has continued to enjoy a vast popularity, above and
beyond intellectual and political circles in the Arab world, contributing to the
propagation of anti-Jewish hatred throughout the Middle East.⁷⁹

79 On the impact of Garaudy’s writings among Muslims, see Goetz Nordbruch, “The Socio-
Historical Background of Holocaust Denial in Arab Countries. Reactions to Roger Garaudy’s The
Founding Myths of Israeli Politics,” (Jerusalem: Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study
of Antisemitism, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, ACTA No. 17, 2001).
Alain Goldschläger
The Trials of Ernst Zündel¹
The United Nations’ Conference on Racism, held in Durban in September 2001,
was a sad reminder of the virulent antisemitism more readily associated with
Europe in the 1930s. Speeches of free flowing hate, pictures borrowed from Nazi
propaganda, and public insults were common. There was, of course, a modern
touch: T-shirts with antisemitic slogans allowed people to wear their hatred on
their chests. In the midst of bitter discussions, especially among the non-gov-
ernmental organizations (NGOs), the subject of the Holocaust became central.
Several attempts were made to trivialize, if not to deny the Holocaust. There were
also proposals to use the word “Holocaust” as a generic term applicable to many
other events—specifically, the equation of six hundred Palestinian deaths during
first year of the second Intifada with the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis.
This decontextualization of the Holocaust is not new; it is, rather, the latest effort
in a trend that began in the early 1950s, immediately after the initial shock wore
off from the discovery of the death camps and the massacres perpetrated by the
Nazis. In the recent past, the word “Holocaust” has been used by different groups
to describe the mass deaths that have resulted from nuclear weapons or from the
Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. If these uses of the word blur the ideology
behind the Nazi atrocities, they at least preserve the horrific magnitude. However,
the present efforts to equate Israel’s actions to the Holocaust grossly distort and
trivialize history.
The Holocaust is a unique event that has marked not only Jewish conscious-
ness, but also world history; it is the symbol for cruelty toward Jews. To equate
other acts of genocide to it and to reduce it to the scope of a “normal” massacre
is to denigrate its particularities and atrocities. If we wish to properly memorial-
ize human suffering, then each act of genocide must be placed in its historical,
social, and human context. Amalgamating all massacres into one category only
denies the particular lessons in each of these events and, in the end, prevents
humanity from learning the lessons of history.
Assaults against the memory of the Holocaust are no longer taboo. The reduc-
tion of the Holocaust to just another “detail” of history (to quote Jean-Marie Le
Pen, leader of the Front National and a former presidential candidate in France)

1 The author would like to thank Prof. Robert Wistrich for his editing work which greatly en-
hanced the text; Alan Shefman, former director of the League of Human Rights of B’nai B’rith;
and Adina Goldberg for helping me with many legal points.
110 Alain Goldschläger

or—as was the case with the Syrian delegation to Durban—its total denial, must
be seen on the world’s political stage as an attempt to delegitimize the State of
Israel. The open denial of the Holocaust by neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and
Arab governments reveals their perception that attacking this symbol critically
injures the Jewish people and thwarts Israel’s national interests. These groups
believe that Holocaust denial can effectively change the course of the future,
perhaps even rejuvenate Nazi ideology, undermine the moral values of the West,
and reduce Western support for Israel and Jewish causes. Therefore, Holocaust
denial must be seen as hate propaganda against Jewish people wherever they live
and against the State of Israel.²
In Canada, these issues gained public attention through two well-publicized
trials of the neo-Nazi “revisionist” Ernst Zündel. These lawsuits were among the
first major public confrontations with the historical, ethical, and social ques-
tions embodied in Canada’s new Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The delicate
balance between the freedom of speech (including the expression of overt lies),
the respect and dignity of a minority, and the preservation of public peace was at
the center of these proceedings.
The trials raised a number of acute questions concerning Holocaust denial. For
example, does it constitute an active form of hate propaganda against an identifi-
able group? While the answer may appear clear today, this was not automatically
the case at the time of the trials; no European legislation had been established to
treat and define Holocaust denial as a criminal offense per se. Furthermore, Holo-
caust denial had not yet become a prime weapon for neo-Nazi groups in Europe
and North America, though it was increasingly present in their literature. Simi-
larly, no Arab or Muslim government in the mid-1980s had employed denial as a
weapon against the State of Israel, even though they printed and distributed the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion as “proof” of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.
The Zündel trials also challenged the effectiveness of the legal system in
fighting hate propaganda and the limitations on legitimate, but antagonistic,
speech. Indeed, this issue goes to the heart of many important democratic values.
Namely, it questions the balance between public peace, and the right of groups
and individuals to freely express potentially hurtful ideas. In practical terms,
when does the freedom of one infringe on the freedom and safety of another?
This discussion was especially interesting because in Canada there is a tendency

2 Deborah Lipstadt wrote in 1993: “I knew that I was dealing with extremist antisemites
who have increasingly managed, under the guise of scholarship, to camouflage their hateful
ideology.... It is intimately connected to a political agenda.” See Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the
Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New York, 1993), 3.
 The Trials of Ernst Zündel 111

to keep an equal distance both from the absolute concept of free speech (often
advocated by American scholars and the American justice system) and the more
controlled application of the idea prevalent in Western Europe.
A third question that became crucial to the deniers and their opponents was
the manipulation of the justice system and the media for propaganda purposes.
Ernst Zündel, like Robert Faurisson before him, found the press very eager to
open their pages and broadcasts to what were seemingly scandalous trials, high
on emotions and theatrics.³ By trying to remain unbiased and balanced, much
of the media appeared to confer equal legitimacy to the opposing views. More-
over, the thundering declarations of Zündel and other deniers made eye-catching
headlines; the press could not resist the temptation to print them. The mere con-
sideration of the deniers’ cases by the entire legal system, including the Supreme
Court of Canada, also seemed to legitimize these extreme positions.
The scholarly questions that historians, linguists, political scientists, and
philosophers debate regarding the transfer of historical knowledge found no
place in the courtroom. Clearly, scientific methodology and accuracy were not on
the agenda of Holocaust deniers, even if they claim that their goal is to “restore”
history. As we shall see, the aim of this alleged scientific discussion is not a better
understanding of historical facts but the promotion of a political and social
agenda. Hence the need for a more levelheaded debate that should take place
among politicians, journalists, and philosophers. Of course, this discussion must
also consider the social impact that these trials had on the Jewish community
and Canadian society. The study by Gabriel Weimann and Conrad Winn of the
Canadian media during the Zündel trials provided the beginning of an answer,
but more attention should be devoted to this phenomenon.⁴

3 A suspended Professor of French Literature at the University of Lyon, Faurisson published

Memoire en defense contre ceux qui m’accusent de falsifier l’Histoire (Paris, 1980); Reponse
à Pierre Vidal-Naquet (Paris, 1982); and, Is the Diary of Anne Frank Genuine? (Torrance, Calif.,
1985). His article in Le Monde (1979) marked the emergence of Holocaust revisionism from a
small circle of devotees into the public conscience and made Faurisson emblematic for the
movement.
4 Gabriel Weimann and Conrad Winn, Hate on Trial: The Zündel Affair, the Media, and Public
Opinion (Oakville, 1987).
112 Alain Goldschläger

The Background
Our story begins in November 1983, when Mrs. Sabina Citron, at the time the
president of the Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Association, privately filed
charges in Toronto against the publisher Ernst Zündel, pursuant to Section 177 of
the Criminal Code (later reclassified as Section 181):

Everyone who willfully publishes a statement, tale or news that he knows is false and that
causes or is likely to cause injury or mischief to a public interest is guilty of an indictable
offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.

Ernst Zündel had published two pamphlets entitled Did Six Million Really Die?
and The West, War and Islam. The Association asserted that the texts not only
contained falsehoods about the extermination of European Jews but denied the
factuality of the Holocaust, thus creating “injury or mischief to a public inter-
est.”⁵ In this case, the injured parties were the Canadian Jewish community in
general and more specifically, Holocaust survivors and their families. Citing the
public interest, the Attorney General of Ontario, Roy McMurty, decided to take
over and prosecute the case.
Section 171 of the Criminal Code (under which Zündel was charged) had
barely been considered by the courts before this case. Thus, there was no existing
jurisprudence regarding its intent, scope, application or reach.
The defendant, Ernst Zündel, was born on 24 April 1939 on a farm in Calm-
bach, in the Black Forest region of Germany. In his autobiography, Zündel wrote
that he emerged from this inconspicuous background with memories of personal
suffering during Germany’s defeat—including “hunger, cold and sickness” under
the French military occupation. His parents were apolitical. In 1953, he enrolled in
a trade school and obtained a diploma as a photo retoucher three years later. He
came to Canada in 1958 as a landed immigrant to avoid peacetime conscription
in West Germany, but did not surrender his German citizenship.⁶ He arrived in
Montreal where he met Adrian Arcand, the former leader of the National-Socialist
Christian Party, who had been imprisoned during World War II for his fascist activ-

5 We used and recommend the detailed account of the trials by Leonidas Edwin Hill, The Trial
of Ernst Zündel: Revisionism and the Law in Canada (Los Angeles, 1989), 165–219.
6 Because Canada allows dual citizenship, Zündel could have kept his German citizenship.
In 1993, thirty years after eligibility, he applied for Canadian citizenship The Minister of
Citizenship and Immigration opposed this, labeling Zündel a “threat to the security of Canada.”
This began a series of legal proceedings that ended only in December 2000 when the Supreme
Court of Canada refused the hear Zündel’s appeal.
 The Trials of Ernst Zündel 113

ities, and who took the young Zündel under his wing.⁷ The extensive library that
Arcand bequeathed to Zündel contained much antisemitica. Zündel entered the
publishing business, moved west, became “the best photo retoucher in Toronto,”
and was employed by mainstream companies. He also started to write and publish
his own texts and those compatible with his neo-Nazi and white supremacist ide-
ology. Zündel’s Samisdat Publishing Company disseminated literature that called
Hitler a great man and leader, claiming that no gassing of any group ever took
place in German camps, and that the “Holocaust” was actually a moneymaking
hoax. Zündel printed antisemitic pamphlets distributed in Canada, the United
States, and in the former West Germany. He also sold Nazi memorabilia. Zündel
believed in an international Jewish conspiracy against Germany and the Allies on
behalf of the State of Israel. In 1982, the Federal Republic of Germany refused to
renew his passport.
Douglas Christie (Zündel’s lawyer) was a native of Winnipeg, living in Vic-
toria, British Columbia. Christie was known for an abrasive style as well as his
positions against federal government policies such as bilingualism, the metric
system, and the replacement of the Union Jack with the Maple Leaf flag. He
founded the Western Canada Concept, a separatist political party. He surprised
many at the trial with his preparation and knowledge of details. His legal argu-
ments, however, were often questionable, seemingly aimed more at making a
public and political stand than at arguing the merits of the case.
Prosecutor Peter Griffiths had to prepare for the trial while dealing with his
normal workload. Support from the academic community and Jewish organiza-
tions partially compensated for Griffiths’ relative lack of time and resources for
preparation. The rulings of the judge show that Griffiths was successful on most
issues. His competence and effectiveness were not that much appreciated by the
press during the trial but have become more evident with time. As for Judge Hugh
Locke, he could refer to very few precedents because the law had not been applied
before. He declined to take “judicial notice” of the historicity of the Holocaust
at the beginning of the trial, thereby leaving the basic facts open to argument.
Because the question had already been raised in the early stages of the trials,

7 Adrian Arcand (1899–1967) founded the Parti National Social-Chrétien (National Social
Christian Party), a party that promoted fascist ideology in Quebec. In 1938, he became
the leader of the Canadian coalition of fascist parties under the banner of the National
Unity Party. Arcand was arrested in May 1940 for plotting to overthrow the state and was
interned for the duration of the war. After release, he returned to the same path and ardently
promoted antisemitism. Zündel considered Arcand to be his “political mentor.” See Lita-Rose
Betcherman, The Swastika and the Maple Leaf (Toronto, 1975).
114 Alain Goldschläger

he was obliged to hear the evidence on this issue from both sides. All of Judge
Locke’s other rulings favored Griffiths’ position.

The First Trial

The first trial started on 7 January 1985. The prosecution presented its case from
11 January to 2 February, followed by the defense. The guilty verdict was rendered
on 28 February and Zündel was sentenced on 25 March. At the opening of the
trial, Christie asked for a ruling on the compatibility of Section 177 with the new
Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Through this preliminary discussion and argu-
mentation, Christie indicated that the entire trial would be a testing ground for
many legal and ethical questions; he was looking for the exemplary value of the
exercise in a larger context.
Christie, quoting article 19 of the United Nations Declaration of Human
Rights, interpreted Section 177 (181) as an unreasonable restriction on the freedom
of speech, which he saw as an absolute right. He argued that the law made the
courtroom the only place where historical truth could be decided. However, Grif-
fiths asserted that there are reasonable limitations to freedom of speech and that
it could indeed “cause some damage to the public interest.” Judge Locke ruled in
favor of Griffiths’ position, but the question was re-opened during the appeals.
The second ruling sought by the defense dealt with the right to question
prospective jurors about their attitudes toward Jews and Judaism, Freemasons,
Germans, the war, the Holocaust, concentration camps, and gas chambers. Chris-
tie asked Judge Locke to exclude Jews and Freemasons from the jury and to permit
the questioning of prospective jurors about their links with such people. Christie
added that the publicity surrounding the trial made it impossible to find jurors
who had not already formed an opinion on Zündel’s guilt.
Griffiths thought that acceptance of the defense’s position would disenfran-
chise citizens. The prosecutor was even more troubled about how Jewishness
could be determined. Using Hitler’s criteria would be an insult. In addition, what
standards would categorize one as a Freemason? Griffiths also emphasized the
unquestionable existence of the Holocaust and the concentration camps, though
he did not request at that time a ruling on “judicial notice” of the Holocaust.
Christie then argued that no judicial notice should be taken regarding the facts
discussed in Zündel’s pamphlets.
In his ruling, Judge Locke concluded that the questions proposed by Christie
were offensive. The judge also indicated that prior knowledge does not automati-
cally make a person unfit for jury duty. He expressed his trust that a selected juror
 The Trials of Ernst Zündel 115

would perform according to his or her oath. Specifically stating that he did not
want to emulate American court practices in this regard, Locke explained that
the selection process was not established to find the kind of juror one wishes, but
to select an honest and open-minded person. He also found it unacceptable to
“disenfranchis[e] a substantial segment of our society...from the right and duty to
sit as a juror in a court of criminal jurisdiction in a democratic country.” The posi-
tion taken by the defense and the implication of discrimination did not enhance
the serenity of the court procedures. A jury of ten men and two women was then
selected, according to the standard procedure.
The prosecution opened its case with a general description of the war as well
as the concentration and death camps through its expert witness, Raul Hilberg.⁸
With impressive erudition and comprehensive knowledge, Hilberg testified to the
obvious mistakes, falsities, and the numerous absurdities expressed in Zündel’s
texts and positions. He was followed by a number of Holocaust survivors who
were asked to describe the conditions and the daily life in the camps; among
them was Professor Rudolf Vrba.⁹ Some witnesses were also called specifically to
counter Zündel’s assertions about a Jewish-Freemason conspiracy whose activi-
ties included the control and manipulation of Canada’s current banking system.
Griffiths sought not only to overturn these claims, but to prove that Zündel knew
that they were false.
During cross-examination, Christie tried to cast doubt on the testimony of
the prosecution’s witnesses. He underlined the unreliable nature of the survivors’
memories and the dangers of accepting their testimonies at face value. Hilberg
responded to Christie with detailed explanations in order to demonstrate that
Zündel’s assertions were “concoction, contradiction and untruth mixed with half-
truth.” Christie replied that all the historical and testimonial books presented as
evidence by Hilberg and the survivors were mere opinion and, as such, inconclu-
sive in all aspects.
Christie tried several techniques to discredit the testimony from Holocaust
survivors about the concentration camps. First, he aggressively labeled the wit-
nesses as co-conspirators who knowingly falsified their testimony to further the

8 Raul Hilberg (at the time, Professor of History at the University of Vermont) was among the
world’s foremost authorities on the Holocaust. He had authored several books, including The
Destruction of European Jewry (New York, 1961), and Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The
Jewish Catastrophe 1933–1945 (New York, 1992).
9 Professor Rudolf Vrba (then Associate Professor of Pharmacology at the University of British
Columbia) was a survivor of Auschwitz (June 1942–April 1944). He wrote, with Alan Besic, The
Conspiracy of the Twentieth Century (Bellingham, Wash., 1989), an extended version of I Cannot
Forgive (London, 1963).
116 Alain Goldschläger

goals of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. He suggested that their stories had simply

been learned by rote and were uttered for Machiavellian reasons. Hence, any
discrepancy or minor error discredited the entire testimony, and exposed the
manipulation. Consequently, argued Christie, their testimony revealed the scope
of a conspiracy capable of producing so many, and seemingly coordinated recol-
lections. He claimed that the witnesses purposely adapted their stories to meet
the needs of secret manipulators who sought to refashion the truth and engaged
in a war against the non-Jewish world. Christie added, with characteristic irony,
that these witnesses were more victims of the conspiracy than of the Nazis; they
were dupes of a conspiracy that had not hesitated to sacrifice them for its own
purposes. Christie insisted that the witnesses should rebel, join the ranks of the
revisionists, and fight against their coreligionists. According to this argument, the
voracity of the conspiracy justifies the Holocaust deniers: if the conspiracy goes
to these extremes, it is because the stakes are of vital importance.
At its most cynical, the defense advanced the following notion: if not all Jews
died, then none was destined to die. The very existence of survivors clearly indi-
cates, according to Zündel, that there was no systematic purpose to Nazi action;
if deaths occurred, they were accidental or natural, or the result of unrelenting
Allied bombing of supply trains. Christie employed counterfactual interpreta-
tions to distort events that are already part of the historical record. For example,
he tried to reinterpret the selection process upon arrival at Auschwitz—widely
understood as a barbaric act in which the lives of the victims were decided at the
whim of the executioners. The defense argued, however, that instead of count-
ing the number of people eliminated because of poor health or uselessness as
laborers, one should accept that German officers saved many for work, and thus,
contributed to the Jews’ survival. Since all of this was done according to rules of
necessity, no one should imply a malicious intent to these soldiers and even less
to the policy of resettlement for work.
Christie liberally applied the notion of mass hysteria to try to explain the sup-
posedly unrealistic number of deaths and the convergence of testimonies given
by Holocaust survivors. Several witnesses for the defense referred to “hysteria” in
the immediate postwar period, particularly during the Nuremberg trials. Christie
insisted that, in time of war and revenge, exaggerated rumors and stories circu-
late widely; he even made a few points with the jury by using the notion of hys-
teria to explain some discrepancies or inconsistencies in testimonies from survi-
vors, much to their dismay.
Throughout the cross-examination of the prosecution witnesses, Christie
revealed a greater knowledge of the literature of the Holocaust than expected.
Although it had been agreed in preliminary discussions between the lawyers that
the trial should not turn into a “battle of the libraries,” Christie introduced more
 The Trials of Ernst Zündel 117

than one hundred books, even after the judge limited the selection to books pub-
lished in English. In the process, he revealed that Zündel had read widely and,
thus, could not (as pointed out by Griffiths) claim ignorance of many reported
facts. Although Christie quoted his sources correctly in some cases, he misused
or misplaced them in many more instances. Griffiths, in fact, could not refute
the vast number of quotations.¹⁰ In addition, Christie argued that all scholarly
references were mere opinions. He claimed, therefore, that the large amount of
evidence was only the repetition of one opinion and not additional, corroborative
evidence. For him, all new explanations or documentation were simply the prod-
ucts of scholarly imagination, disconnected from reality.
Christie asserted in his opening statement that Zündel did not believe that
six million died in the “so-called” gas chambers. No less, Zündel intended to
prove the Holocaust had not happened. Had Christie argued that Zündel could
not know the real history of the Holocaust and truly believed his two pamphlets
represented the facts, the defense would have been extremely strong. Consider-
ing the safeguards included in the law, Zündel would have most likely escaped
conviction with this argument. Zündel’s good faith would have been a sufficient
defense against prosecution. Indeed, the flaw in the Canadian law becomes
apparent here: to achieve a conviction, the prosecution has to prove the intent
and the desire to hurt; it has to enter the mind of the accused and prove that the
goal was specific injury. It must prove that the defendant not only knew that his
words were lies but that he intended to use those lies as a weapon.
Zündel and Christie adamantly argued that the war did not lead to the exter-
mination of Jews and that Judeo-Freemason conspirators had manufactured all
of the stories of organized murders and genocide. Zündel and Christie thereby
attempted to repudiate all evidence of the systematic destruction of European
Jewry. Indeed, Christie did not ask the jury to decide between two sets of contra-
dictory evidence but to reject anything and everything presented by survivors,
scholars, and experts of any kind. They were invited to accept without nuance
Zündel’s theory, together with charges of conspiracy, concealment of truth, the
manipulation of data, and the falsification of written, visual, and physical doc-
uments.
Witnesses for the defense were an assortment of outcasts and (mainly)
amateur historians with an obvious agenda. Three were university professors
(although not historians) who had lost their academic positions: Robert Fau-

10 See the brilliant account by Nadine Fresco, “Les redresseurs de morts. Chambres de gaz: la
bonne nouvelle. Comment on revise l’histoire,” Les Temps Modernes, no. 407 (1980): 2150–
2211, on the type and frequency of intellectual and factual manipulations used by deniers.
118 Alain Goldschläger

risson; Gary Botting, a professor of English at Red Deer (Alberta); and Charles
Weber from the University of Tulsa. There was the Canadian Holocaust denier
James Keegstra; Ditlieb Felderer, a Swede who offended jurors with a satirical and
macabre deposition on Auschwitz; Udo Walendy and Thies Christopherson—two
elderly Germans with poor English skills who had been prosecuted for Holocaust
denial in Germany. There was also the Reverend Ronald Marr, a Baptist minis-
ter who favored free speech; and the pathetic Frank Walus, a locomotive fitter
misidentified and prosecuted in the United States as a Gestapo agent. During
cross-examination, Griffiths did not hesitate to highlight their dubious academic
credentials or criminal records. He exposed both their ignorance of historical
events and how they manipulated facts to create false conclusions.
The most important testimony came from Ernst Zündel himself at the end of
the trial. During his lengthy presence on the stand, Zündel displayed contempt
for all points of view but his own and showed signs of the hatred for which he
stood accused. In his eyes, enmity against the German people, rather than the
Jews, was the root of all evil. He tried to persuade the jury of Hitler’s numerous
and admirable talents and spoke of the French Canadian antisemite, Adrian
Arcand, with the highest esteem. At this point, Griffiths introduced, with great
effect, some of Zündel’s recent writings (such as The Hitler We Love and Why).
The prosecutor insisted that these publications promoted antisemitism, admira-
tion for Hitler, and violence in the Federal Republic of Germany. Griffiths asserted
that Zündel’s purpose was political in nature and not the benign dissemination of
scholarly historical research. Thus, Zündel’s use of false information was a con-
scious and voluntary act of hate propaganda. Throughout it all, Zündel, more
than anyone else, torpedoed his own defense by nakedly exposing his feelings
and intents.
During the trial, one of the most important discussions concerned the
number of victims. The controversy had started with the first “revisionist,” Paul
Rassinier. The French Socialist camp survivor had calculated in the early 1960s
that Auschwitz had at most 50,000 victims of all backgrounds and no more than
360,000 perished in all the camps combined. Faurisson, who testified at Zündel’s
trial, wrote: “My estimation is the following: the number of Jews exterminated
by the Nazis is happily equal to zero.”¹¹ All deniers argue about these numbers;
their estimates are both varied and entirely fanciful. The common denominator,
however, is reduction of the quantity of victims. Since we will never know the
precise number, it is quite easy to argue, as the deniers do, that there is room for

11 Robert Faurisson, interview in Storia Illustrata (Aug. 1979): 197.

 The Trials of Ernst Zündel 119

variation. While this is true, that variance does not sanction the elimination of
historical reality or trivializing the scope of the tragedy.
This kind of discourse by Holocaust deniers has one obvious goal and also a
more subtle one. The transparent goal is to minimize the scope of the horror by
deflating the level of murder to a “normal” civilian victim count for a war. This
places the number of murdered Jews near (and often less than) that suffered by
other populations during the war, especially the Germans. As regrettable as it
may be, say the deniers, loss of life is a normal consequence of war and therefore
cannot be construed as a demonic attack against a single part of the population.
Because there is a definite link between the number of dead and the idea of a
systematic extermination of a specific group, to deny the number is to deny the
existence of such a policy.
But there is a more pernicious side to the deniers’ arguments. By focusing
on numbers in demographic charts and using pseudo-demography, the scope of
the killing and the suffering is marginalized. The debate is reduced to data, not
human beings: 1,000,000 or 100,000 deaths become a statistical equation. The
dispute over numbers fosters a process of blurring and, as such, contributes to
the notion that history is an abstract construct, that we cannot know the reality
of the past but only “the story of history.” Christie thereby argued that figures and
calculations are subjective and not a basis for historical certainty. History is only
what the present is able to conceive and, therefore, allows for competing interpre-
tations of equal validity. Deniers insist that their version of history can be placed
at the same level of plausibility as any other, especially the official one.
Deniers also accept at face value the terminology used by the Nazis to hide
their actions and reject the possibility that the Third Reich ever devised a lan-
guage of concealment. Deniers do show, however, fertile imaginations and exces-
sively critical minds when deciphering a text or image from an Allied source.
For example, they accept the Nazi description of the Einsatzgruppen as special
defense troops whose mission was only to fight and retaliate against resistance.
Consequently, all executions performed by these troops on the Eastern Front were
justified and complied with the normal rules of war. Because the Einsatzgruppen
were formed and trained to kill Jews, they were responsible for the murder of
over one million Jews in Russia—and the removal of their actions from the histor-
ical debate is indeed crucial for deniers.¹² Their very existence, their operational

12 Ronald Headland, calculated a total of 1,152,731 victims by the end of 1942; see Messages
of Murder: A Study of the Reports of the Einsatzgruppen of the Security Police and the Security
Service 1941–1943 (Rutherford, N.J., 1992). Raul Hilberg reached a similar number; see
Documents of Destruction (Chicago, 1971), 3:1219.
120 Alain Goldschläger

orders, and written military reports are an indictment of the entire Nazi regime
and an obvious indicator for the policy of systematic extermination so vigorously
called into question.
Given the importance of the Einsatzgruppen for Holocaust deniers, they do
not hesitate to rewrite the reports: they replace the word “Jew” with “partisan”
to fit the category of anti-guerrilla warfare. They claim that the murderous Nazi
actions were not part of a unique plan of extermination. Only misguided people
seeking to denigrate the German army could imagine differently. The number
of dead that can be attributed to German actions are therefore manipulated to
match descriptions of a defensive action. Jews seized by the Einsatzgruppen are
said to have been executed as members of the underground or as saboteurs, not
as Jews, and their death is a consequence of resistance. Consequently, claim the
deniers, the entire subject of the Einsatzgruppen is irrelevant to the discussion
and should not be raised.
Denial of the existence of death camps is, of course, especially vital. Hence
the nature of the camps is reduced to providing work for Jews and others. If there
were deaths, they must be attributed to a variety of conditions—to anything but
a systematic attempt to kill. For deniers like Zündel, the camps which actually
existed were maintained properly, providing as clean and comfortable conditions
as the war would allow.
But it is the gas chambers which are the overriding symbol of the Nazi Holo-
caust. It is thus of prime importance for deniers to erase their very existence or to
redefine their use. Indeed, the text that marks the birth of the revisionist move-
ment, Le Mensonge d’Ulysse (1950) by Paul Rassinier, elaborately questioned the
existence of gas chambers. Contemporary deniers explain the physical presence
of such chambers in the camps as additions made later to justify the story of
mass killing or as depots that used Zyklon-B to disinfect and delouse clothes and
possessions. They dispute even the killing capacity of the gas for human beings.
Here again, convoluted discussions of the killing potential of each gas chamber
provoked long diatribes by deniers, downgrading the total number of victims,
further disconnecting the facts from their interpretations.
Adopting a pseudo-scientific approach, deniers suggest that if Zyklon-B was
indeed used to kill, the walls of the chambers would be impregnated by the gas.¹³
They usually present a series of so-called experts who scientifically “prove” the
lack of residual gas in the structures. No recognized scientist, working in his or
her own field, has, however, supported these conclusions of Holocaust deniers.

13 See Robert Van Pelt, The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial (Bloomington,
Ind., 2002).
 The Trials of Ernst Zündel 121

On the contrary, this line of argument was thoroughly discredited by Jean-Claude

Pressac who provided an important account of the gas chambers, their purpose,
design, financing, construction, and use. After securing access to the SS archives
confiscated by the Russians, he combined these with Polish, German, and Israeli
sources. Pressac employed all the available technical, industrial, and practical
data to confirm the existence of the gas chambers and their terrible effective-
ness.¹⁴
Zündel argued that the number of dead could not have been cremated by
the ovens at Auschwitz because they were not large enough, and the task would
require a large amount of coal, the presence of which is not recorded. According
to him, the present fragility of the buildings testifies to the impossibility of using
them so intensely for the described function. Zündel added that the small number
of cremated corpses were actually victims of typhus that had to be destroyed to
prevent the spread of the disease.
He dismissed testimony about cries, screams, and the smell of burning
human bodies as effects of the imagination or propaganda, reported only after
the war to mould the myth of innumerable deaths. Yet again, mass hysteria was
being blamed for the macabre descriptions found in survivors’ accounts.
Zündel’s text, The West, War and Islam, was less central to the trial, but it
was still important since it revealed his worldview and placed the entire trial in a
more contemporary context. Zündel argued for a link between Hitler and Yasser
Arafat and predicted a new Holocaust. The Jews, the Freemasons and the Com-
munists were alleged to be organizing a war of extermination against the Islamic
world. Since Zündel was joining the Arab campaign, his action had to be seen as a
“courageous attempt” to battle Zionist propaganda in North America and Europe.
During his testimony, Zündel indicated that Freemasonry was in fact anti-Chris-
tian, controlled by Jews and Satanists, and had promoted bloody revolutions in
America, France, and Russia. Its power over the banking system was absolute
and it continually expanded by control over the members of many philanthropic
organizations like the Rotary Club, the Lions, etc. When questioned by Christie at
the trial, Freemasons insisted that their activities were limited to charitable and
philanthropic causes. A senior vice-president of the Royal Bank of Canada also
appeared and vehemently denied that his bank or the International Monetary
Fund gave unsecured loans for ideological reasons to countries with bad credit
credentials.

14 Jean Claude Pressac, Les Crematoires d’Auschwitz: La machinerie du meurtre de masse

(Paris, 1993). Pressac is a pharmacist, who initially went to Auschwitz to prove that the gassing
did not occur, but he reversed his stand.
122 Alain Goldschläger

The jury could not determine whether this second text qualified as hate pro-
paganda and in the final judgment, this charge was dismissed. Nevertheless, the
proceedings dealing with this item, as well as Zündel’s personal deposition, were
laced with antisemitic undertones and may have had an effect when the jury con-
sidered the question of hatred towards Jews.
Long seen as a symbol of the anxiety and suffering of Holocaust victims, the
Diary of Anne Frank was a particularly common target of “revisionists.” Zündel
was no exception, and repeatedly claimed that the diary was a hoax. Robert Fau-
risson, who testified for the defense, elaborated on the subject whereas Zündel
took the traditional denier’s position that Anne Frank’s father had concocted the
Diary after the war.
The jury eventually entered a guilty verdict regarding Zündel’s pamphlet Did
Six Million Die? On 25 March 1985, Judge Locke sentenced Ernst Zündel to fifteen
months imprisonment with the stipulation not to write or publish, directly or
indirectly, on the Holocaust and related subjects for three years. On the day of
sentencing, Zündel arrived at court carrying a large cross bearing a sign with the
inscription “Freedom of Speech.” Judge Locke spoke plainly and called Zündel a
well-heeled racist, who promoted the Big Lie and pushed for a revival of Aryan
Nazi grandeur that would prevent “civilized behavior in our Canadian multicul-
tural society.” He insisted that the verdict had consequences for the entire Cana-
dian community and not only for the nation’s Jews.¹⁵ Since Zündel had remained
a German citizen in spite of his long stay in Canada as a landed-immigrant, dif-
ferent voices (like the Canadian Jewish Congress) asked for the commencement
of expulsion procedures—an automatic step for anyone convicted and sentenced
to six months or more in prison.

The Appeal and Second Trial

An appeal was filed with the Ontario Court of Appeals and was heard from 22–26
September 1986. Christie introduced more than five dozen grounds for appeal.
The upper court found most of these without merit and specifically accepted the
ruling that section 177 (now 181) did not violate a person’s freedom of expression
as guaranteed by the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Five grounds for appeal
were recognized. The only serious one involved Locke’s instruction to the jury

15 Judge Locke added: “[Zündel] published not for the purpose of honest public debate,
but rather with the fixed intention of destabilizing the Canadian community. Mr. Zündel has
slandered the memory of innocent murdered human beings.”
 The Trials of Ernst Zündel 123

about Zündel’s knowledge of the false contents in his pamphlet. On 23 January

1987, the court ruled in favor of the appeal. The Canadian Government immedi-
ately decided to prosecute again.
The second trial took place in Toronto from mid-January until early May 1988,
with a one-week interruption in February and another in March. Ernst Zündel
again asked Douglas Christie to assume his defense. John Pearson was the gov-
ernment’s chief counsel in place of Griffiths. His tactic was to emphasize Zündel’s
links with Nazi ideology and modern neo-Nazi groups; this would establish the
intent to publish the false contents of the pamphlet. Justice Ronald Thomas, a
district court judge, chaired the proceedings. At the start of the trial, he made two
important rulings. First, he forbade media coverage. This effectively eliminated
the type of grandstanding that Zündel had enjoyed at the first trial. Except for
intermittent and vague reports in the daily Toronto Star and the weekly Canadian
Jewish News, the trial did not make the headlines and, indeed, was barely noticed
by the general public. This strongly contrasted with the first trial, which occupied
the press almost on a daily basis and was at the center of public attention. Crude
or inflammatory reports from first trial had provoked numerous reactions. During
the second trial, the Jewish community was particularly pleased by the lack of
offensive articles in the nationally distributed newspapers.
Thomas’s second important ruling involved “judicial notice.” Although the
Ontario Supreme Court stated that Judge Locke had used his discretion properly
by refusing to take “judicial notice” of the facts of the Holocaust in the first trial,
Judge Thomas now took “judicial notice” of the same issue. He instructed the jury
to accept as historical certainty the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis, though he
left open the questions of scale, method, and official policy. This decision dra-
matically changed the nature and scope of the trial, making the testimony of sur-
vivors unnecessary. Many of Christie’s theatrics as well as the public wounding of
Jewish survivors and their families were thus avoided.
Pearson began by reading, in extenso for the record, the book The Hitler We
Love and Why that Zündel wrote under the pseudonym Christof Friedrich, as well
as one of his earlier writings, UFOs: Nazi Secret Weapons? He also read the tes-
timony of Raul Hilberg from the first trial; unwilling to undergo another session
of Christie’s rude questioning, Hilberg did not appear this time. The prosecution
then called Professor Christopher Browning as an expert witness.¹⁶ The professor

16 Christopher Browning was then Professor of History at Pacific Lutheran University at

Tacoma. His writing includes Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution
in Poland (New York, 1992), and Fateful Months: Essays on the Emergence of the Final Solution
(New York, 1985).
124 Alain Goldschläger

dissected the errors and falsehoods of Zündel’s pamphlet during three of his five
days in court. Christie’s aggressive attacks on the scholarly credibility of Brown-
ing—including the fact that some of his research had been funded by Jewish
groups and published by the Wiesenthal Center—were repelled by Browning’s
erudition and bearing. Douglas Christie called twenty-three witnesses. Many,
like Robert Faurisson, Ditlieb Felderer, and Botting, had testified in the first trial.
Some of them were not called as experts; instead, Christie invited their “opinion
evidence.”¹⁷ Because the appeals court had agreed that visual reconstruction of
the camps should have been accepted in the first trial, Felderer was allowed to
present slides of Auschwitz that included a supposed swimming pool, a dance
hall, and a music auditorium. Under cross-examination, Walendy admitted that
he had sent comments and remarks to Zündel about Did Six Million Really Die?,
thus enhancing the suspicion that Zündel was fully aware of some errors and
falsehoods in the pamphlet and that he had knowingly published a questionable
text.
The defense’s strategy seemed to be less coordinated than in the first trial.
For example, Weber wavered on the issue of the Diary of Anne Frank, while Robert
Faurisson maintained a strong stand on the question; the latter claimed that it
was, at least in part, a hoax. Faurisson also attacked Hilberg’s scholarship. He
tried, as did Botting, to reinforce the subtle nuances used in the previous trial
about the presentation of opinions as facts. These kind of distinctions escaped
most of the other witnesses, who insisted that Zündel’s writings were a true ren-
dition of history and that the Holocaust was a fraud.
Two new witnesses appeared before the court. Fred A. Leuchter, an Amer-
ican engineer of doubtful credentials, presented his report. After visiting a few
concentration camps, he alleged that, from an engineering point of view, the
buildings could not adequately perform the task described and asserted that
there were no residual traces of gas in the walls.¹⁸ After Leuchter came the star
witness: David Irving, the English historian who had written extensively about
Hitler and was a leading Holocaust denier. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Irving’s
books had initially proposed an image of Hitler as a moderate and fair leader
who aimed only at restoring Germany’s power, while his assistants perpetrated

17 Udo Walandy wrote Truth for Germany: The Guilt Question of the Second World War
(Torrance, Calif., 1981). He also translated into English and edited Auschwitz im IG-Farben-
Prozess: Holocaust-Dokumente? (Vlotho/Weser, 1981).
18 The transcript of the trial includes Leuchter’s full report. Several shorter or updated versions
were published in London and reprinted in the Journal of Historical Review. They were also
available on the now-forbidden Zündel website.
 The Trials of Ernst Zündel 125

criminal acts without his knowledge. While accepted by Faurisson and others as
an asset to their movement, Irving did yet not share their vision regarding the
genocide. Notwithstanding criticism from established historians (Martin Gilbert,
Hugh Trevor-Roper, Gerald Fleming and Martin Broszat), he remained a part of
the academic debate. Because of his status, he became the star of right-wing and
neo-Nazi groups. But in the late 1980s, Irving crossed the line to Holocaust denial
after reading and publishing Fred Leuchter’s reports in his Focal Point Publi-
cations. On cross-examination, Irving accepted that his views about Hitler had
indeed changed and that he was closer to Zündel’s opinion than some of his writ-
ings indicated.
Pearson proved himself an efficient cross-examiner. He forced witnesses
to admit their errors as well as their ignorance of historical facts and of tech-
nical matters. He also successfully linked witnesses to Zündel’s antisemitism,
anti-Zionism, to the White Power movement in North America, and neo-Nazism
in Europe. The prosecutor exposed Zündel as an ardent Nazi, fully aware that
he was publishing racist propaganda and an active promoter of Nazi ideology,
regardless of historical truth. Pearson insisted that the discussion was not about
securing a more authentic knowledge of history; rather, it concerned the dissem-
ination of a political agenda regardless of its harm to society.
As for Christie, he did not attempt, as in the first trial, to argue principally for
freedom of speech. Rather, his case centered on Zündel’s belief that the Holocaust
did not occur, that the camps were a postwar invention and that the number of
Jewish dead was grossly exaggerated. Evidently for strategic reasons, he argued
that these were “honest beliefs” and emphasized that the law protects opinions
regardless of their accuracy.
After listening to the closing arguments, Judge Thomas instructed the jury at
length, emphasizing that the question was not whether Zündel’s beliefs revived
Nazism but if he published books that he knew contained falsehoods. The jury
convicted Zündel and he was sentenced to nine months in prison. Judge Thomas
concluded: “It is not the Holocaust that was a fraud; Ernst Zündel is a fraud.” An
appeal was immediately filed.
The Court of Appeals for Ontario heard the case beginning in September
1989 and rejected the appeal in February 1990. Its decision confirmed the proper
conduct of Zündel’s second trial, including the use of judicial notice. Christie
then introduced an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, which two years later
on 27 August 1992 decided (in a vote of four against three) that the appeal of Ernst
Zündel had merit. It found that section 181 of the Canadian criminal code was
unconstitutional because it “infringes on the guarantee of freedom of expres-
sion” and that “the content of the communication is irrelevant.” The majority
emphasized that, at the time of its creation, this law was designed to prevent
126 Alain Goldschläger

“deliberate slanderous statements” but that to combat “propaganda or racism is

to go beyond its history.” The court expressed concern about the wording of the
law. It felt that the scope covered by the words “statements, tales or news” was
ambiguous when it referred to historical and social speech. It also felt that the ter-
minology “injury or mischief to a public interest” was vague and thus potentially
applicable to too large a social or political group. Between the lines, the judgment
seemed to question the need for protection from lies and falsehoods as long as
physical force is not used.
In a lengthy and strongly worded statement, the dissenting opinion opposed
every aspect of the judgment. It asserted that section 181 was precise enough for
reaching its target—punishment of intentional lies and falsehoods used to harm
specific groups. It also argued that the term “public interest” was sufficiently
defined and thus the limitation imposed by the section was reasonable. Taking a
wider perspective, the dissenters determined that the law had an important role
in achieving social harmony: “A democratic society capable of giving effect to the
Charter’s guarantees is one which strives towards creating a community commit-
ted to equality, liberty, and human dignity.” It held that “racism is a current and
present evil in this country” and thus, section 181 played “a useful and import-
ant role in encouraging racial and social tolerance.” The dissenting opinion
concluded that “where racial and social intolerance is fomented through the
deliberate manipulation of people of good faith by unscrupulous fabrication, a
limitation on the expression of such speech is rationally connected to its eradica-
tion.” As a consequence of the Court’s judgment, section 181 of the criminal code
was declared as having “no force or effect.” In spite of some strong statements by
the different courts concerning the repugnance of Zündel’s message and attitude,
he was not actually convicted of the charges brought against him. While Zündel’s
successful appeal ended the charges rendered against him under section 181, it
was not the end of his legal problems.

Epilogue

In March 1991, Zündel sponsored a neo-Nazi conference in Munich. German

police broke it up, arrested Zündel and charged him with defaming “the memory
of the dead” and “inciting racial hatred.” Because of the German laws aimed
at Holocaust deniers, Zündel and his friends have been convicted on a regular
basis. A few months later, Zündel was again convicted of inciting racial hatred for
distributing a video “The Auschwitz Lie.” He was fined 12,600 Deutsche marks
(approximately US $6,000) and expelled from Germany. In 1993, Zündel formally
requested Canadian citizenship. After a report by the Canadian Security Intel-
 The Trials of Ernst Zündel 127

ligence Service (CSIS) found that Zündel was a “security risk,” the Minister of
Citizenship and Immigration of Canada refused the request.
Then, in 1995, Sabina Citron—the initiator of the previous trials against
Zündel—filed a private complaint at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal against
Zündel for defamatory libel and conspiracy to promote anti-Jewish hatred. The
Toronto Mayor’s Committee on Community and Race Relations joined her, esti-
mating that it had reasonable grounds to believe that Ernst Zündel was posting
hate messages on his website, the “Zündelsite.” These messages were in direct
violation of section 13(1) of the Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA). This section
forbids discrimination against persons or groups on the grounds of race, religion,
national or ethnic origin, or sexual orientation by telephonic dissemination of
messages that are likely to expose a person or persons to hatred or contempt.
The tribunal condemned Zündel for contravening the Canadian Human Rights
Act and ordered him to stop using the Internet for promoting hate. It pointed out
that the Internet cannot be a place where hate is uncontrolled and unpunished.¹⁹
The Zündel trials transpired in the new legal environment created by the prom-
ulgation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), which set out to balance
the rights of individuals with those of society. The Charter also sought equilib-
rium between the rights of minority and majority groups—a particularly crucial
issue in Canada, where the official policy of multiculturalism is seen as the center
of national identity. Thus, the legal decision on hate literature embodied in these
trials was an important test for the courts, for Canadian society, and the self-im-
age that Canadians want to maintain. In the international arena, Canada has
always seen itself as a prime protector and promoter of civil and political rights
for individuals. Therefore, editorialists and jurists like Alan Borovoy (general
counsel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association) voiced concern during the
trials that Canada might restrain civil liberties within its borders and thus create
a discrepancy between its domestic actions and its international stand.
The basic concern has been that while it may be reasonable to desire a ban
against extreme opinions and hatred, any such laws would equally impair the
legitimate expression of dissenting views. Furthermore, once the principle of
intervention and control is established, it will be applied to subsequent cases,
some far removed from any expression of racial or religious hatred. Basic human
rights will be jeopardized: the voices of strikers, demonstrators, anarchists and,
of course, all forms of artistic or aesthetic endeavors will be bent to the “will of the
majority.” Heated questions like gay rights, abortion, or violence against women

19 The full text of the judgement can be found on http://www.chrt_tcdp.gc.ca /decisions/

docs/citron_e.htm.
128 Alain Goldschläger

are seen as areas where laws against hate literature could easily be abused to
silence one side or the other.
One disturbing aspect of this position is the assertion that words alone
cannot provoke harm. While linguists reach new conclusions about the impact
of language on reality, western legislators seem able to recognize and act only
against physical evidence of wrongdoing or in terms of narrow definitions of per-
sonal defamation. Verbal violence against a corporate group, like hate literature
against a minority, seems to be outside their designation of harmful enterprise.
This prompted noted law professor Irwin Cotler to observe that the Charter of
Rights and Freedoms has emerged as a paradoxical weapon: designed to protect
minorities from hate-mongers, it ends up being used by the latter in court to
protect their message of hate from being suppressed.²⁰ If legislation on hate liter-
ature becomes, in practice, more a shield for racism than a sword against hate, its
opponents and proponents will have reversed their roles. Furthermore, Professor
Cotler placed the discussion in the larger frame of human rights and their protec-
tion. Indeed, hate propaganda is more than just a legal question but an assault on
human dignity and basic human rights as well as social peace.

The Press

At Zündel’s first trial the press handled its reportage in a problematic fashion.
The headlines were particularly provocative, presented in a journalistic style
designed to grab readers’ attention. For more than a month, these headlines
simply repeated the most outrageous statements in order to attract attention,
without offering an opposing view. The sensationalist trend was quite disturbing
because it occurred almost daily for at least two months.²¹

20 Irwin Cotler, Nuremberg Forty Years Later: The Struggle against Injustice in Our Time
(Montreal, 1995), 223. Cotler is a professor of law at McGill University, and since 1999, a
member of Canada’s parliament, serving for a time as Minister of Justice.
21 A survey of the Globe and Mail, the nationally distributed newspaper of the financial and
political establishment, reveals the following headlines: “Lawyer For Zündel Tries to Stop Jews
from Being Jurors” (9 Jan. 1985); “Can’t Reveal Freemasonry Data, Policeman Testifies at Zündel
Trial” (15 Jan.); “Holocaust Scholar Quoted ‘Madman’, Publishing Trial Told” (17 Jan.). Other
newspaper headlines followed the same pattern: “Nazi Camp Survivor Wrong on Death, Trial
Told” (Toronto Star, 12 Jan.); “Freemasons not ‘Satanic,’ Officer Tells Holocaust Trial” (Toronto
Star, 15 Jan.) “Expert’s Admission: Some Gas Death ‘Facts’ Nonsense” (Toronto Sun, 17 Jan.),
“Science ‘Has Not Proved’ Gas Use” (Toronto Sun, 18 Jan.); “No Scientific Proof Jews Gassed,
Trial Told” (Toronto Star, 18 Jan.) “Genocide A Myth, Jury Told” (Vancouver Sun, 6 Feb.) “Nazi
 The Trials of Ernst Zündel 129

Once the trial ended, the Canadian media offered a flurry of articles and
almost unanimously expressed repulsion for Zündel’s ideas, highlighting the
potential danger of hate propaganda for Canadian multiculturalism. The dis-
cussion concentrated mostly on the appropriateness of using the courts to fight
racism and the need for more education on the history of World War II and the
Holocaust. The media now took the opportunity to present historical facts in a
more serious fashion. For a few weeks, especially in their larger weekend issues,
newspapers commented extensively on the trial and condemned Zündel’s posi-
tion.
The press eventually reached an informal consensus that the trials had
indeed given Zündel a platform for disseminating his dangerous ideas. Frank
Jones, a columnist for the Toronto Star, wrote on 1 March 1985

Quietly, like a thief in the night, the insidious ideas of Zündel and his gang have sneaked
their way into the consciousness of the young who may not know better and into the minds
of some of their elders grasping for any straw to justify their prejudice.

Editorials expressed the fear that harm had been done to Canada’s social fabric
and the principles of multiculturalism.
A lingering question remains: Did the trials actually promote antisemitism
and racial tension in Canada? This issue was examined by Gabriel Weimann and
Conrad Winn (Hate on Trial: The Zündel Affair, the Media and Public Opinion in
Canada) who studied the reaction in the press and the public immediately after
the first trial, particularly whether it had increased antisemitism. In an elabo-
rate statistical analysis, the authors came to several conclusions. First, except
for Quebec, the public was well aware of the trials and the issues and had not
gravitated toward Zündel’s viewpoint. The authors speculated upon the reasons
for this phenomenon. One factor may have been that the people most suscepti-
ble to Zündel’s arguments did not follow the news closely. For those freer from
prejudice and more attuned to the press, the trial reinforced their stand as well
as their knowledge of the Holocaust. As Weimann and Winn noted, “the trial
seems to have reduced prejudices against Jews in a European context but not to
have affected prejudices against Jews” in Canada.²² The more revealing conclu-
sion is that the trial made people who were normally sympathetic towards Jews
more aware of those with doubts about the Holocaust. Consequently, there was a

Gas Chambers Unproven, Court Told” (Vancouver Sun, 7 Feb.). Even the Canadian Jewish News
did not escape the trend. Its headlines read: “Witness: Good Food, Theater, Pool At Auschwitz”
(21 Feb.); and, “No Nazi Genocide Policy, Defendant Tells Court” (28 Feb. 1985).
22 Weimann and Winn, Hate on Trial, 163.
130 Alain Goldschläger

common perception that Holocaust denial is spreading in society. While stating

that the trial had made them personally less prone to anti-Jewish reactions, many
respondents thought that its “climate” made their neighbors more susceptible to
antisemitic attitudes. The survey found that anti-Jewish prejudice and ignorance
of Jewish issues were still a problem in Canada. On the other hand, it demon-
strated that

Large numbers of Canadians were knowledgeable and unprejudiced in the Western prov-
inces,... university graduates, especially women, were almost devoid of prejudice.

More negatively, it showed that young people were “strikingly ignorant of the
Holocaust and were twice as inclined as people in their middle years to blame
Jews for their victimization.”²³
Much of Holocaust denial literature relies on the myth of a Judeo-Masonic
conspiracy aimed at global control and the enslavement of the non-Jewish world.
The deniers add that the rest of the world will see the dark design only after the
conspirators reach their goals. They insist that religious and moral forces must
unite in an all-encompassing fight of light against darkness, ethics against immo-
rality, freedom against slavery, and Christianity against Judaism.
This antisemitic conspiracy theory allows every event to be set in an all-en-
compassing universal context. The media and entertainment industry are
allegedly targeted by Jews because they are a means to control public opinion
and break the moral fiber of the nation. Thus, the Jews are also able to silence any
voice of opposition that sought to reveal the truth about their machinations. With
this conspiracy theory, deniers like Zündel could fit all of their arguments into a
distorted, preexisting explanation of history. Within the system, everything was
clear; from outside of the system, everything became fantasy. Typically, deniers
construct history backwards, forming premises for conclusions they have already
accepted. For example, they argue that since the Zionists sought to create a Jewish
state, they needed support among the Western powers. But because that support
did not exist, the Jews invented a reason to induce sympathy. Specifically, they
had fabricated a story of genocide to compel the West to offer support. To gener-
ate the illusion of a genocide, they had to provoke a world war. This was achieved
by causing Germany’s ruin in two ways: first, the humiliating armistice condi-
tions imposed after the defeat in World War I, followed by the Great Depression.
The Jews had earlier instigated World War I to ensure Germany’s defeat in 1918. In
this reading of history, 1948 explains the Second World War, which explains 1929,
which explains 1918, and so on.

23 Ibid., 163–64.
 The Trials of Ernst Zündel 131

In their description of World War II, the Holocaust deniers repeatedly claimed
that it was a defensive war against “belligerent Jews” who were trying to enslave
Europe. The Germans, with their strong link to “Aryan” roots, were simply the first
to recognize the danger.
Deniers like Zündel have consistently painted the Germans as the victims of
calumny, forced to carry the blame for crimes they did not commit and to pay
damages for losses that never occurred. In reality, it is the Jews who should be
required to pay for the suffering they relentlessly inflicted upon Germany. As
the principal (if unrecognized) aggressor against Nazi Germany, the Jews were
responsible for all war damages. Hence, Zündel and other deniers present their
actions as a response to Jewish persecution and their fight as a crusade to defend
innocent victims.

Conclusion

Holocaust deniers have long been adept at attracting media interest and public
attention. Like David Irving in England, Ernst Zündel seemed to savor legal pro-
ceedings. The courtroom kept him in the public eye, perpetuating an image of a
“martyr for truth” persecuted by Jewish lobbyists and their acolytes. Trials also
helped him to collect funds for legal and illegal activities. This, of course, raises
some troubling questions about the use of the legal system as a tool for hate pro-
paganda. This problem confronts all democracies and there is no simple solution.
The issue is not really “freedom of speech,” as many fringe groups would have
us believe but the abuse of the judicial system as part of a media circus. Most of
Zündel’s and Irving’s antics happened before or during legal proceedings; once
the verdict is in, their voices seem to fade. They reclaim the position of “victim”
only at the next trial.
One might wonder why public ridicule, scorn, and humiliation do not deter
“revisionists” and other fringe groups. They seem to seek the largest possible
audiences, regardless of the negative reactions they may face. The answer is
found in a simple calculation. If a revisionist can reach 100,000 listeners through
a radio broadcast, and if he gains the interest of only one-half of one thousandth,
this still represents fifty potential candidates for indoctrination. Even with the
scorn of the remaining 99,950, this would still be construed as a great success.
Hence, there may have been a kernel of truth in Zündel’s boast that the million
free dollars in advertising guaranteed him “victory” regardless of the verdict in
the trial. Furthermore, the trials reinforced his status in the far Right milieu, and
thus helped to raise funds for the cause and for himself.
132 Alain Goldschläger

Moreover, in his quest for exposure, Zündel effectively used the power of the
Internet. Like several other extreme political groups, he quickly realized that the
worldwide web could bypass national legislation and allow the transmission of
controversial and, indeed, heinous messages with impunity. The legal system
reacted slowly, but new legislation is now in place in Germany, Britain, France,
and some other countries that prohibits the dissemination of Holocaust revision-
ism. The question of cross-border transmission on the Internet remains firmly on
the agenda of the legal system.
“Revisionist” discourse has consistently tried to undermine the dignity of
the Jewish people and to legitimize the emergence of open antisemitism. It may
be condemned as extremist and racist, but it has nonetheless generated ques-
tions about the role and the morality of Jews in other areas—as demonstrated by
the unceasing attacks against Israel in the media. Holocaust deniers like Zündel
systematically accused the Jews of today of carrying out the same crimes as did
the Nazis. Using a fabrication like the Protocols, he focused his hate propaganda
against the so-called “Jewish conspiracy” to dominate the world.
Zündel predicted in The West, War and Islam that a new Holocaust was on
the horizon. He wrote that a Jewish conspiracy threatened the enslavement of the
Arabs and called for a radical response. This included the glorification of Hitler
and the presentation of the German people as victims. Obscuring the systematic
extermination of the Jews and other “non-Aryans” remains a prerequisite for
the rebirth of Nazism as a viable ideology and a political alternative. Once this
is done, as Zündel advocated since the beginning of his career, neo-Nazis and
antisemites in general can think about how to complete the “Final Solution” that
they deny ever existed.
 The Trials of Ernst Zündel 133

Bibliography

Principal Revisionist Texts

The following relate directly to Zündel’s position as discussed in the text.

Butz, Arthur. The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Torrance, Calif., 1976.
Christopherson, Thies. Die Auschwitz-Lüge. Brighton, U.K., 1973.
Faurisson, Robert. Mémoire en défense contre ceux qui m’accusent de falsifier l’Histoire. Paris,
1980.
– Réponse? Pierre Vidal-Naquet. Paris, 1982.
– “Revisionism on Trial: Development in France, 1973–1983.” Journal of Historical Review 6, no.
2 (1985): 133–81.
Friedrich, Christof [Ernst Zündel] and Eric Thomson. The Hitler We Love and Why. Toronto, 1981.
Graf, Jürgen. Auschwitz. Taetergestaendnisse und Augenzeugen des Holocaust. Wuerenlos,
Switzerland, 1994.
– and Carlo Mattogno. KL Majdanek. Eine historische und technische Studie. Hastings, 1998.
Harwood, Richard. Did Six Million Really Die? Brighton, U.K., 1972.
Hoggan, David L. (? pseud.). The Myth of the Six Million. Newport Beach, 1969.
Irving, David. Hitler’s War. New York, 1977.
– Churchill’s War: The Struggle for Power. Bullsbrook, 1987.
– The War Path. London, 1987.
Journal of Historical Review. Torrance, Calif.
Leuchter, Fred A. The Leuchter Report. London, 1988.
Marais, Pierre. Les camions à gas en question. Paris, 1994.
Mattogno, Carlo, Robert Faurisson, Serge Thion, and Germar Rudolf: Auschwitz. Nackte Fakten
(Auschwitz. naked facts). N.p.: n.p., 1995.
Rassinier, Paul. Le Mensonge d’Ulysse. Paris, 1950.
– Le Drame des Juifs européens. Paris 1964.
Rudolf, Germar [Ernst Gauss]. Grundlagen zur Zeitgeschichte. Tübingen, 1994.
– Vierteljahreshefte fuer freie Geschichtsforschung (Quarterly for free historical research),
1996.
Sanning, Walter. Die Auflösung des osteuropäischen Judentums. Tübingen, 1983.
Staeglich, Wilhelm. Der Auschwitz Mythos. N.p., 1978.
Thion, Serge. Vérité historique ou vérité politique?. Paris, 1980.

Selected Bibliography
Abella, Rosalie and Melvin Rothman, eds. Justice Beyond Orwell. Montréal: Editions Yvon
Blais, 1985. See especially: Cotler, Irwin. “Hate literature,” 117–24; and Borovoy, A. Alan.
“Freedom of Expression: Some Recurring Impediments,” 125–60.
Barrett, Stanley R. Is God a Racist? The Right Wing in Canada. Toronto, 1987.
Bercuson, David and Douglas Wertheimer. A Trust Betrayed: The Keegstra Affair. Toronto, 1986.
Betcherman Lita-Rose. The Swastika and the Maple Leaf. Toronto, 1975.
Borovoy, A. Alan. “Freedom of Expression: Some Recurring Impediments.” In Justice Beyond
Orwell, edited by Rosalie Abella and Melvin Rothman, 125–60. Montréal, 1985.
134 Alain Goldschläger

– When Freedoms Collide: The Case of Our Civil Liberties. Toronto, 1988.
Christie, Douglas. Free Speech Is The Issue. Toronto, 1990.
Cohn, Norman. Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion. London, 1967.
Cotler, Irwin, ed. Nuremberg Forty Years Later: The Struggle against Injustice in Our Time.
Montreal, 1995.
– “Principles and Perspectives on Hate Speech. Freedom of Expression, and Non-Discrim-
ination: The Canadian Experience as a Case Study in Striking a Balance.” In Nuremberg
Forty Years Later: The Struggle against Injustice in Our Time, edited by Irwin Cotler,
220–35. Montreal, 1995.
– “Hate Literature.” In Justice Beyond Orwell, edited by Rosalie Abella and Melvin Rothman, 117–24.
Montréal, 1985.
Davies, Alan. “A Tale of Two Trials: Antisemitism in Canada,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies 4,
no. 1 (1989): 77–88.
– ed. Antisemitism in Canada. Waterloo, 1992.
Dawidowicz, Lucy. “Lies About the Holocaust,” Commentary (Dec. 1980).
Dershowitz, Alan M. Contrary to Popular Opinion. New York, 1992.
Douglas, Lawrence. “The Memory of Judgement: The Law, the Holocaust, and Denial,” History &
Memory 7, no. 2 (Fall-Winter 1996): 100–20.
Edelheit, A. and H. Edelheit. History of the Holocaust. Boulder, Colo., 1994.
Finkielkraut, Alain. L’Avenir d’une négation. Paris, 1982.
Francq, Henry G. Hitler’s Holocaust: A Fact of History. Vancouver, B.C., 1986.
Fresco, Nadine. “Les Redresseurs de morts. Chambres à gaz: la bonne nouvelle. Comment on
révise l’histoire,” Les Temps Modernes 35, no. 407 (1980): 2150–2211.
– et al. “Revisionnisme-négationnisme,” Lignes, 2, (1988): 29–201.
– and Nina Farhi. “How History Is Being Revised,” Patterns of Prejudice 10, no. 5 (Sept.-Oct.
1976): 25–27.
Gill Seidel. The Holocaust Denial: Antisemitism, Racism and the New Right. Leeds, 1986.
Goldschläger, Alain. “Réflexion sur un discours antisémite,” Tribune Juive, 5 no. 4 (1988).
– “Lecture d’un faux ou l’endurance d’un mythe: Les Protocoles des Sages de Sion,” Cahiers de
Recherche Sociologiques, 12 (Spring 1989).
– ed. La langue de bois. In the series La Pensée et les Hommes. Bruxelles, 2001.
Gutman, Israel. Denying The Holocaust. Jerusalem, 1985.
Haupt, Peter I. “A Universe Of Lies: Holocaust Revisionism and the Myth of Jewish World
Conspiracy,” Patterns of Prejudice, 25, no. 1 (1991): 75–85.
Hilberg, Raul: Documents of Destruction. Chicago, 1971.
Hill, Leonidas Edwin. “The Trial of Ernst Zündel: Revisionism and the Law in Canada,” Simon
Wiesenthal Center Annual 6 (1989): 165–219.
Holocaust Denial: A Selected Bibliography. Jerusalem, 1999.
Jones, Mitchell. The Leuchter Report: A Dissection. Cedar Park, Tex., 1992.
Kinsella, Warren. Web of Hate: Inside Canada’s Far Right Network. Toronto, 1994.
Kornberg, Jacques. “The Paranoid Style: Analysis of a Holocaust-Denial Text, ” Patterns of
Prejudice 29, nos. 2–3 (Apr.-July 1995): 33–44.
Lipstadt, Deborah E. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. New
York, 1993.
Matas, David. Bloody Words: Hate and Free Speech. Winnipeg, 2000.
Poliakov, Léon. La Causalité diabolique. Paris, 1980.
 The Trials of Ernst Zündel 135

Pressac, Jean-Claude. Auschwitz: Technique and Operation of the Gas Chambers, New York,
1989.
– “Pour en finir avec les négateurs,” L’Histoire, 156 (1992): 42–51.
– Les Crématoires d’Auschwitz: La Machinerie de meurtre de masse. Paris, 1993.
Prutschi, Manuel: “The Zündel Affair,” in Antisemitism in Canada, edited by Alan Davies.
Waterloo, 1992. Davies, 249–78.
Rubenstein, Richard L. The Cunning of History: The Holocaust and the American Future. New
York, 1987.
Sandler, Mark. “Hate Crimes and Hate Group Activity in Canada,” University of New Brunswick
Law Journal 43, no. 269 (1994).
Taguieff, Pierre-André. La Force du préjugé. Paris, 1987.
– “Les Protocoles des Sages de Sion”: Faux et usages d’un faux. Paris, 1992.
– La nouvelle Judéophobie. Paris, 2002.
Van Pelt, Robert. The Case for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial. Bloomington, Ind.,
2001.
Vidal-Naquet, Pierre. Les Assassins de la mémoire. Paris, 1987.
– and Limor Yagil. Holocaust Denial in France: Analysis of a Unique Phenomenon. Tel Aviv, n.d.
Weimann, Gabriel and Conrad Winn. Hate on Trial: The Zündel Affair, the Media, and Public
Opinion. Oakville, 1987.
Wellers, Georges. Les Chambres à gas ont existé: des documents, des témoignages, des
chiffres. Paris, 1981.
Wistrich, Robert Solomon, ed. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Selected Bibliography.
Jerusalem, 2006.
David S. Wyman. The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust. New York, 1984.
Milton Shain and Margo Bastos
Muslim Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism
in Postwar South Africa¹
One of the fundamental goals of apartheid was the social and intellectual separa-
tion of South Africa’s so-called racial groups—Africans, “Colored,” Indians, and
whites. Although the first three groups, generally lumped together as “blacks,”
interacted with whites in the workplace, in domestic work arrangements, and in
other informal settings, they never engaged seriously in the normal social sense.
Thus the Muslim community, residing mainly (although not exclusively) in the
Western Cape region, was far removed from its “white” neighbors.² Rigid sep-
aration between Muslims and white South Africans, including Jews, began to
erode only in the late 1980s.³ Socioeconomic boundaries continue to exist; it will
take decades to erode that informal but almost hermetic veil. One major change,
however, is that a public platform is now afforded to all voices and viewpoints,
including those of the Muslim population. During the 1990s, an articulate (and
for some, disturbing) voice of Islam began to be heard by more and more South
Africans.
Shortly after its formation in 1996, a Muslim vigilante movement known as
People against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) made international news when
a well-known Cape Town gangster, Rashaad Staggie, was shot, doused with gas-
oline, and burned alive in front of hundreds of onlookers.⁴ Similar militancy was
evident at a number of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist protests held in the 1990s,
where “one Zionist, one bullet,” was the common refrain—echoing the well-
known Pan-Africanist Congress slogan, “one settler, one bullet.” For whites in
general and for Jews in particular, the sight of placard-waving Muslims, many
in kaffiyahs, conjured up images of Iran, Algeria, and the West Bank and gave

1 Our thanks to Abdulkader Tayob for his thoughtful comments. Needless to say, the opinions
and conclusions offered here are those of the authors alone.
2 South African Muslims, mostly Sunni, numbered 553,585 (1.4 percent of the total population)
in the 1996 census. Muslims were considered part of the “Colored” population; they are the
descendants of 17th-century political prisoners brought to the Cape from Indonesia—ex-slaves,
19th-century immigrants, and the offspring of black/white miscegenation. See Ebrahim Moosa,
“Islam in South Africa,” in Living Faiths in South Africa, ed. Martin Prozesky and John de Gruchy
(Cape Town, 1995).
3 See John Kane-Berman, South Africa’s Silent Revolution (Johannesburg: South African
Institute of Race Relations, 1990).
4 See Cape Times, 5 Aug. 1996.
138 Milton Shain and Margo Bastos

rise to a perception that Muslim fundamentalism was on the rise. To some extent
this perception was accurate, since South African Muslim militancy also reflected
worldwide developments. At present, there is both greater animosity toward
the Jewish State and increased antisemitism. However, it would be incorrect to
assume that Muslim–Jewish cordiality characterized the past. Rather, the geog-
raphy of apartheid, coupled with state repression and the relatively insular and
non-confrontational character of the conservative Muslim elite,⁵ was what once
enabled Jews to feel a false sense of harmony with South African Muslims.⁶
Generally ignored by the white and Jewish media, Muslims in South Africa
had long expressed anti-Zionist feelings; as early as 1925, the Muslim Outlook had
criticized “Jewish capitalists” for allegedly forcing Arab peasants off the land.⁷
Whereas the white-owned and Eurocentric media sympathized wholeheartedly
with the Jewish state from its establishment in 1948, Muslims viewed the new-
found state as a catastrophe⁸ and castigated Israeli military victories against Arab
forces as barbaric.⁹ Sharing in the humiliation of their “brothers and sisters,”
South African Muslims used “Zionism” as a term of opprobrium and perceived
Israel as an aggressor state.¹⁰ Muslim expressions of frustration and anger,
however, rarely entered the public (that is, white) domain.
But by the time Israeli forces occupied southern Lebanon in 1982, a new gen-
eration of Muslims had begun to challenge its more conservative elders. Inspired
by new radical teachings and by the African student uprising in Soweto in 1976,

5 Muslim politics in the 1950s and 1960s revolved mainly around issues of Orthodoxy. See
Abdulkader Tayob, Islamic Resurgence in South Africa (Cape Town, 1995), ch. 2.
6 The historiography of South African Jewry has, by and large, ignored Muslim–Jewish
relations. Among the exceptions are Gideon Shimoni’s “South African Jews and the Apartheid
Crisis,” American Jewish Year Book 88 (1988): 3–58; which made use of interviews of prominent
Muslims, conducted by Tzippi Hoffman and Alan Fischer, in idem, eds., The Jews in South Africa:
What Future? (Johannesburg, 1988). For more recent coverage on Muslim attitudes toward
Jews, see Jocelyn Hellig, Anti-Semitism in South Africa Today (Tel Aviv: Project for the Study of
Anti-Semitism, 1996), and Milton Shain, “Antisemitism and South African Society: The Past, the
Present, and the Future,” inaugural lecture, University of Cape Town, 1998.
7 Muslim Outlook, 18 Apr. 1925.
8 See Muhammed Haron, “The Muslim News (1960–1986): Expression of an Islamic Identity in
South Africa,” in Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed. Louis Brenner
(London, 1993), 222.
9 See, for example, the article titled “Barbarity of the Jews,” which appeared in the Muslim
News, 14 July 1967 (“1948 and 1967 show that despite centuries of wandering in Europe [the
Jews] have not lost their barbaric tendencies which previously incurred the wrath of God”). See
also ibid., 28 July 1967.
10 See, for example, Muslim News, 28 July 1967; Tayob, Islamic Resurgence in South Africa, 85.
 Muslim Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in Postwar South Africa 139

and buttressed by Khomenism and the international Muslim struggle against

imperialism, younger Muslims increasingly rejected the more accommodating
behavior of the Muslim establishment. Historically, many of the Muslim elite had
identified with the white ruling class, taking refuge in a self-defined sense of reli-
gious and cultural superiority.¹¹ Notwithstanding, “progressive” Islamic groups
also existed, some of them dating back to the 1950s: in the Transvaal, there was
the Young Men’s Muslim Association (1955) and the Universal Truth Movement
(1958); in Natal, the Arabic Study Circle (1950) and the Islam Propagation Centre
International (1957); and in the Western Cape, the Cape Muslim Youth Movement
(1957) and the Claremont Muslim Youth Association (1958).¹²
In the Transvaal and Natal, the emphasis was on promoting wider under-
standing of Islam. In the Cape, however, Islamic groups were far more political.
For instance, the Islamic Mission, a newsletter sponsored by the Claremont Muslim
Youth Association, serialized the anti-state writings of Abdul A’la Mawdudi (1903–
1979) and Sayyid Qutb (1906–1966).¹³ The fortnightly Muslim News, together with
other Muslim publications, increasingly vilified Zionist “intrusion” and focused
attention on “the tragedy of Palestine,” regularly displaying photos of Israeli sol-
diers attacking Arab children and eyewitness accounts of “Israeli atrocities.”¹⁴
Significantly, local Muslims were also warned about “Zionist designs.” Readers
were implored to avail themselves of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and to
familiarize themselves with its contents.¹⁵
Among the prominent anti-apartheid activists in the Cape was a cleric, Imam
Adbullah Haron, who had a profound influence on South African Muslims.¹⁶ Yet
his death in police custody in 1969 was met with silence on the part of the Muslim
clergy, and this in turn left younger Muslims feeling betrayed and disillusioned.¹⁷
The search began for a “socially relevant Islam,” as epitomized in the formation

11 See Farid Esack, Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism (Oxford, 1997), 20.
12 See Tayob, Islamic Resurgence, 82–83. The Claremont Muslim Youth Association was
initially part of Call of Islam, a short-lived umbrella group of Muslims who opposed the Group
Areas Act. See Farid Esack, “Three Islamic Strands in the South African Struggle for Justice,”
Third World Quarterly 10, no. 2 (1988): 473–98.
13 See Tayob, Islamic Resurgence, ch. 3; and Desmond Charles Rice, “Islamic Fundamentalism
as a Major Religiopolitical Movement and its Impact on South Africa” (M.A. thesis, University of
Cape Town, 1987), 438–52.
14 See, for example, Muslim News, 23 Aug. 1963, 22 May 1964, and 22 Sept. 1968.
15 Muslim News, 10 Apr. 1971.
16 See Rice, “Islamic Fundamentalism,” 452.
17 See Esack, Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism, 52. See also the interview with Abdurrashid
Omar in Hoffman and Fischer, Jews in South Africa, 143–49.
140 Milton Shain and Margo Bastos

of the Muslim Youth Movement in 1970 and the Muslim Students Association in
1974.¹⁸ A range of Islamic activities was increasingly coordinated and guided by
what was understood to be an authentic modern Islamic paradigm that, while
not focusing on apartheid, did not entirely ignore it.¹⁹ In calling for an “Islamic
way of life,” groups such as the Muslim Youth Movement “reflected the black con-
sciousness movement’s appeal to an authentic black identity in South Africa.”²⁰
Although substantial opposition to the new Islamism persisted, particularly
among those consolidating Deobandi thought in the Transvaal and in Natal,
“progressive” forces did have an impact.²¹ On occasion, the state even inter-
vened, several times banning the publication of anti-Zionist articles in the Muslim
News.²² Muslim militancy was particularly evident in the wake of the United
Nations resolution of 1975 that equated Zionism with racism, which was hailed
as a victory for the Palestine Liberation Organization and a defeat for the United
States and Israel.²³ By the late 1970s, a Palestine Islamic Solidarity Committee
had been established in Durban and the Muslim Youth Movement had embarked
on an Islamic campaign that included study programs, camps, and manuals.²⁴
The material for these programs, much of it provided by Islamic groups abroad,
targeted Zionism, secularism, capitalism, and Communism as the major threats
to Islam.²⁵
Added impetus to South African Muslim militancy was provided by the
success of the Iranian revolution in 1979. In its wake, the writings of Ali Shari’ati
(1933–1977) and the Ayatollah Khomeini were included on Muslim Youth Move-
ment reading lists. Although Iran was not seen as a model for South African
Muslims, a group called Qibla was founded in 1980 that was patently inspired by
the overthrow of the Shah. “Islamic Revolution in South Africa” became a popular
slogan in Cape Town. Meanwhile, Muslim demonstrations against Israel and
Zionism at the University of Cape Town and the University of the Witwatersrand

18 Esack, Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism, 33. For a detailed examination of the Muslim Youth
Movement, see Tayob, Islamic Resurgence.
19 Tayob, Islamic Resurgence, ch. 4, esp. 118–19.
20 Ibid., 122.
21 Ibid., ch. 4.
22 See Haron, “The Muslim News (1960–1986),” 222–23.
23 See, for example, Muslim News, 28 Nov. 1975; interview with Ibraheem Mousa in Hoffman
and Fischer, Jews in South Africa, 171–74.
24 On the Islamic Solidarity Committee, see Haron, “The Muslim News (1960–1986),” 223.
25 See Tayob, Islamic Resurgence, 140.
 Muslim Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in Postwar South Africa 141

(following the Sabra and Shatilla massacres in Lebanon in 1982) revealed the
extent of anti-Zionism among younger South African Muslims.²⁶
In 1983, the ruling National Party drafted a new constitution that granted
limited political representation and the right to vote to “Coloreds” and to Indians.
Muslims were included in the proposed franchise (Africans—some 70 percent
of the population—were not). The proposed constitution, which came up for a
vote in November 1983, was opposed by a broad coalition of groups that urged a
boycott. Even the conservative Muslim Judicial Council, the largest representative
body of imams and sheiks in the Western Cape, refused to support the National
Party’s initiative.
The nascent Muslim consensus concerning a “no-vote” on the constitution
crumbled, however, with the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF), an
umbrella organization that included not only non-Muslim groups but also Com-
munists, “amoral” secularists, and Zionists.²⁷ The inclusive nature of the UDF
presented a fundamental challenge to Muslims.²⁸ For a short period the Muslim
Judicial Council, almost by default, affiliated itself with the UDF, as did Al Jihad, a
small, self-styled Shia group. The Muslim Youth Movement, however, denounced
it, while Qibla expressed opposition to its absence of revolutionary ideology. Even
the Muslim News saw the UDF as “ideology-less” and “dangerous.” According to
an article in the paper: “This is the WCC [World Council of Churches] cum Zionist
and Stalinist politics which the MJC is playing at. This is not the ‘Call of Islam,’ it
is the call of the Shaytaan [Satan] to take the oppressed of this country to a solu-
tion [from] Washington and Moscow.” ²⁹ Affiliation with the UDF, for many, was
tantamount to selling out Muslim identity.
The ulama, the conservative Muslim clergy, was also opposed to the UDF.
As Farid Esack notes, the ulama had a well-established modus vivendi with the
apartheid state, seeking

to avoid fitnah (disorder), to obey the political authorities, to identity with the lesser of the
two evils (i.e., with apartheid rather than communism) and to hold on to the known, in this

26 See Varsity: Official Student Newspaper of the University of Cape Town 41, no. 9 (Aug.
1982).
27 The UDF was essentially an internal wing of the then-banned African National Congress,
whose leaders at the time were in exile.
28 See Abdulkader I. Tayob, “Muslims’ Discourse on Alliance against Apartheid,” Journal for
the Study of Religion 3, no. 2 (Sept. 1990): 31–47; and Esack, “Three Islamic Strands.”
29 Muslim News, 13 July 1984, cited in Tayob, “Muslims’ Discourse on Alliance against
Apartheid,” 38–39.
142 Milton Shain and Margo Bastos

case, sexist and exclusivist clerical theology, rather than the unknown of communitarian
theological reflections on the Qur’anic text.³⁰

In essence, the UDF was seen as a threat to Islam; the conservative Muslim estab-
lishment was not prepared to see Christians, Jews, and the “Other” (however
defined) as partners in its political struggle. Interfaith solidarity was considered
sinful, harboring the potential, in the words of Adil Bradlow, to “reduce Islam to
the level of a religion in the western sense of the word.” ³¹
Bradlow argued that affiliation with the UDF would “prevent the presentation
of Islam [to the oppressed] as the major liberating power” and would be “tanta-
mount to an act of shirk [polytheism], associating others with Allah, for He Alone
is ‘Sovereign.’” ³² As Esack explains, such opposition to interfaith solidarity was
rooted the notion that anything non-Islamic was, ipso facto, void of virtue, while
any freedom outside the parameters of Islam was of no consequence.³³
Notwithstanding, there were other Muslims who were determined to share
in the anti-apartheid struggle with others, including Christians and Jews. This is
not to say that they jettisoned the religious basis of their opposition to apartheid.
Instead, building on a more humanistic and inclusive tradition—including the
writings of Shari’ati and Taleqami (1910–1979)—these Muslims found justification
for their views within Islam. In particular, leaders of the Call of Islam (established
in 1984 by a breakaway group from the Muslim Youth Movement and the Muslim
Students Association) represented a specifically South African Islamic face
within the UDF. Their message, spread through mass rallies, pamphleteering,
and involvement in political funerals, directly challenged the Muslim establish-
ment.³⁴ One of their leaders, Ebrahim Rasool (Western Cape secretary of the UDF)
argued that the UDF would “create the conditions whereby Muslims will take their
rightful place in the struggle. It does not simply take an appeal from the Qu’ran to
create revolutionaries among Muslims.” ³⁵ More significantly, Rasool and others
advocating interfaith solidarity drew upon Islamic tradition and Qur’anic texts to

30 Esack, Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism, 254.

31 Adil Bradlow, “United Democratic Front: An Islamic Critique” (1984), 9, cited in Esack,
Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism, 41. See also Ebrahim Moosa, “Muslim Conservatism in South
Africa,” Journal of Theology for Southern Africa 69 (1989): 79.
32 Bradlow, cited in Esack, Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism, 41.
33 Ibid., 41.
34 Although the Muslim Youth Movement also took an anti-apartheid stance, it did not align
itself with any political movement.
35 Quoted in “Muslims Mobilize,” New Era (Mar. 1988), cited in Esack, Qur’an, Liberation and
Pluralism, 34.
 Muslim Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in Postwar South Africa 143

legitimize their stance. “The Qu’ran makes it clear that non-Muslims per se are
not our enemy,” Rasool argued. “[Enemies] of Islam must be defined by the way
in which they undermine Islamic values. Values like justice.” ³⁶
In debates concerning interfaith solidarity, however, the position of the
“Other,” including the Jew, proved most contentious. While it would be wrong to
suggest that there was an obsession with the presence of Jews, the Zionist ques-
tion did complicate attitudes. By the 1980s, “progressive” South Africans shared
a powerful mood of Third World anticolonialism. Within this framework the ille-
gitimacy of Zionism was an important component, especially given South Afri-
ca’s close technological, scientific, and military ties with the Jewish state, which
dated back to the mid-1970s.³⁷
Qibla capitalized on this mindset in its opposition to the UDF. Describing
the organization as Zionist-controlled and operating at the behest of the interna-
tional Jewish financial conspiracy, Qibla was able to tap into a deep-rooted anger
that identified Zionism as the “citadel of imperialism.” Indeed, for some observ-
ers, Jewish and Zionist manipulation was responsible for apartheid.³⁸ The Muslim
press regularly wrote about international financial machinations centered on
Zionism. Even local newspapers, noted Sheikh Nazeem Mohammed, president of
the Muslim Judicial Council, were “controlled by the Jews.”³⁹ These conspiratorial
ideas were taken further by Ibraheem Mousa, a journalist and academic, who
spoke of Jews as being “in control of a large stash of economic power in South
Africa.”⁴⁰ Even those Jews committed to the struggle against apartheid were never
fully trusted. The majority of Jews, claimed Sheik Mohammed, had “obviously
thrown in their lot with the Afrikaners” and “identified themselves undoubtedly
with the white people. There are those who are not aligned, but it has no effect on
the entire Jewish community.” ⁴¹ Charitable endeavors on the part of Jewish insti-
tutions during times of crisis—for instance, following the destruction of shanties
in Crossroads, a black township outside Cape Town—were also viewed with skep-
ticism.⁴²

36 Interview with Ebrahim Rasool in Hoffman and Fischer, Jews in South Africa.
37 In 1976, Prime Minister B. J. Vorster came to Israel on a state visit that yielded
technological, scientific, and military agreements between the two countries. See James
Adams, Israel and South Africa: The Unnatural Alliance (London, 1984), 17.
38 See interview with Ebrahim Rasool in Hoffman and Fischer, Jews in South Africa.
39 See interview with Nazeem Mohammed, ibid.
40 See interview with Ibraheem Mousa, ibid.
41 See interview with Nazeem Mohammed, ibid.
42 See interview with Ebrahim Rasool, ibid.
144 Milton Shain and Margo Bastos

In the late 1980s, Muslims in the “Colored” areas began to take part in mass
demonstrations, with the result, according to the BBC, that “the streets of Cape
Town resembled those of Tehran.” ⁴³ Once Prime Minister Fredrick W. de Klerk
lifted the ban on illegal organizations in February 1990, marches became even
more common.⁴⁴ Bosnia, Kashmir, and “Palestine” were the main topics of
protest, and both the U.S. and Israeli embassies were frequent targets of picket-
ing.
In May 1990, the Call of Islam initiated a conference that attracted Islamic
organizations from throughout the country.⁴⁵ Although there were some indi-
cations that more progressive positions were being accepted, even by critics of
modern Islamic thought, a powerful strain of anti-state discourse persisted at the
conference. Qibla continued to reject proposals for a negotiated settlement with
the South African government. Its leader, Achmat Cassiem, also called for exclu-
sivist Islamic unity in an appeal that attracted many conservative and radical
Muslims.
The clearest indication of Islamic resurgence was the ongoing conflict
between Jewish and Muslim students at the Universities of Cape Town and Wit-
watersrand. At a number of solidarity meetings for Bosnian Muslims, American
and Israeli flags were burned.⁴⁶ Jews, notes Esack, “were invariably equated with
blood-sucking Zionists, and Christians with imperialists.”⁴⁷ Shortly before South
Africa’s first democratic elections in April 1994, Cassiem founded the Islamic Unity
Convention, a movement that claimed to be a union of 200 groups, although in
essence it was a “front for marginalized religious figures and a few small organi-
zations who accept[ed] the pre-eminence of Qibla and its leader.” ⁴⁸ Muslim unity
was proclaimed a “cardinal article of faith,” and the community was implored to
boycott the election. Although this call was ignored, the “pure Islamic solution”
became increasingly attractive as a moral malaise swept post-apartheid South
Africa.
A visit in May 1994 by Yasir Arafat kept the Middle East firmly in focus. Speak-
ing in a mosque in Johannesburg, Arafat told South African Muslims that “jihad
will continue…. [Y]ou have to fight and start the jihad to liberate Jerusalem, your

43 Cited in Esack, ”Three Islamic Strands,” 486.

44 See Esack, Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism, 224.
45 See Tayob, Islamic Resurgence, 182–83.
46 See Allie A. Dubb and Milton Shain, “South Africa,” in American Jewish Year Book 94
(1994): 375.
47 Esack, Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism, 225.
48 Farid Esack, “Pagad and Islamic Radicalism: Taking on the State?” Indicator SA 13, no. 14
(Spring 1996): 9.
 Muslim Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in Postwar South Africa 145

sacred shrine.” ⁴⁹ The following year, placards reading “Kill a Jew and Kill an
Israeli” and “Jewish Blood” were displayed outside the Israeli embassy in Cape
Town.⁵⁰ At an international Muslim conference titled “Creating a New Civilisation
of Islam,” held in Pretoria in April 1996, speakers referred to Jews as a powerful
economic force and blamed Zionists for all of society’s evils. A few months later,
anti-Israel and antisemitic mailings were received by the Union of Orthodox Syn-
agogues in Cape Town. These condemned “Nazionist barbarity” and quoted the
Qur’an: “Strongest among men in enmity to the believers wilt thou [Mohammed]
find the Jews and the pagans.” ⁵¹
It was in this context that PAGAD, a Qibla-inspired movement, emerged.⁵²
Against a background of unemployment and poverty and the breakdown of law
and order in the aftermath of apartheid, Muslims began to participate in marches
to the homes of known drug dealers. PAGAD, however, also had a more explicit
political platform, as evidenced by its flaunted ties with Hamas and Hizbollah.
According to Esack, such ties were expressions of identification with the Muslim
community worldwide (the ummah). It was also indicative of a powerful anti-Zi-
onism that constantly drew parallels between the former apartheid state and
Israeli oppression of Palestinians.⁵³
In January 1997, following a bombing in a mosque in Rustenburg, members
of the Muslim community accused the Mossad of responsibility. A month later,
Qibla led a vociferous march on the Israeli embassy, culminating in the usual
Israeli flag-burning. A similar march took place in Johannesburg, organized by
the Islamic Unity Convention. On the eve of Yom Kippur that year, Muslims held
pro-Hamas demonstrations outside a Pretoria mosque and placed a full-page
advertisement in the Pretoria News criticizing the newspaper’s “biased and one-
sided version of events in the Middle East.” ⁵⁴ An incident in Hebron (in which a
Jewish extremist distributed posters depicting Mohammed as a pig) led to heated

49 See Milton Shain, “South Africa,” American Jewish Year Book 96 (1996): 357.
50 “South Africa,” Antisemitism World Report 1996 (London: Institute for Jewish Policy
Research and American Jewish Committee, 1996), 311.
51 “South Africa,” Antisemitism World Report 1997 (London: Institute for Jewish Policy
Research and American Jewish Committee, 1997), 356.
52 See Esack, “Pagad and Islamic Radicalism,” 9.
53 Ibid., 10. In 1996, there were reports that Hamas delegates were planning to meet with key
South African politicians. Although the report later turned out to be erroneous, further reports
that Hamas had training camps in South Africa were treated seriously (though never confirmed)
by the national unity government led by the African National Congress. See Milton Shain,
“South Africa,” American Jewish Year Book 97 (1997): 419.
54 See Milton Shain, “South Africa,” American Jewish Year Book 98 (1998): 402.
146 Milton Shain and Margo Bastos

protests in Pretoria and Cape Town. Shortly thereafter, a home that housed a
Jewish book center in Cape Town was firebombed, and phone threats were made
against a Jewish home for the elderly and a synagogue. Although Imam Rashied
Omar, the vice president of the World Conference on Religion and Peace, issued a
condemnation, the Muslim Judicial Council kept its silence.
Tension between Muslims and Jews was exacerbated by the continued
stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. When the mayor of the Cape
Metropolitan Council, the Reverend William Bantom, was invited to attend an
international mayoral conference in Israel in May 1998, Muslim organizations
(supported by the African National Congress provincial caucus) pressured him
not to go. Israeli jubilee celebrations in Cape Town that month were marred by
Muslim protestors, led by Qibla, who shouted “One Zionist, one bullet” and “Viva
Hizbollah and Hamas.” ⁵⁵ In an exchange of letters to the Cape Times, Sheikh
Achmat Sedick, the secretary general of the Muslim Judicial Council, condemned
South African participation in the jubilee; Seymour Kopelowitz, the national
director of the Jewish Board of Deputies, countered that anti-Israel demonstra-
tions were “clearly aimed at South African Jews and not towards people living
many thousands of miles away in the Middle East.” ⁵⁶
South Africa’s refusal to issue a visa to Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, spiritual
leader of Hamas, sparked another round of protests.⁵⁷ In a telephone interview
from Kuwait that was broadcast on a Cape Town Muslim radio station, Yassin
denounced all Zionists as terrorists. Qibla protested against the government deci-
sion outside the gates of Parliament, and Sheikh Ebrahim Gabriels of the Muslim
Judicial Council declared that Muslims “did not recognise the Israeli State which
was founded illegally on Palestinian land.” ⁵⁸
The radicalization of Islam in South Africa from the 1970s onwards was
marked by a distinctly negative shift in Muslim attitudes toward South African
Jews and by increasing public protest in line with the “normalization” of South
African society in the 1990s. Such protest, it should be noted, took place in a con-
ducive atmosphere: leaders of the African National Congress, whose links with
the PLO dated back to their years in exile, continued to maintain close ties with

55 In addition, the Islamic Students Society at the University of Cape Town staged a protest
opposite the Isaac and Jesse Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research in order to mark
the 50th anniversary of the nakba (catastrophe) that had befallen the Palestinian people in
1948. See “The Battle of Kaplan,” Iqraa, 29 May 1998.
56 Cape Times, 5 and 11 May 1998.
57 An invitation had been issued to Yassin by two South African government ministers, Dullah
Omar and Valli Moosa, who had met with the Hamas leader in Saudi Arabia in April 1998.
58 See SA Jewish Report, 22 May 1998.
 Muslim Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in Postwar South Africa 147

the organization in the post-apartheid era and fully supported the aspirations of
the Palestinian people (although recognizing as well Israel’s right to exist).⁵⁹ Not-
withstanding, Muslim protests had a resonance beyond mere empathy for fellow
Muslims in the Middle East.
The historic relationship between Jewish and Muslim South Africans incor-
porated within it the potential for conflict. Certainly in the Western Cape, some of
the Muslim anger against Jews was underpinned by landlord–tenant relations in
the inner city; by encounters within the textile industry (where Jews were promi-
nent as employers and Muslims as workers); and, of course, by the general anger
concerning white privilege with which Jews were understandably associated. As
Ebrahim Rasool noted with regard to more recent times, “the Jewish community
is also by and large the business community, the owners of the big shops, the
factories. More often than not, our relationship with the Jewish community is one
where we are around negotiating tables with them. Our workers striking at their
factories and so forth.” ⁶⁰
A dialectical relationship thus operated between negative stereotyping that
was rooted in historic encounters, radical teachings, and specific realities. This
said, the most important factor influencing Muslim–Jewish relations in the last
quarter-century is undoubtedly Zionism and the Jewish community’s public and
unequivocal support for Israel. Even without the historic ties between the apart-
heid state and Israel, tensions would have been unavoidable. Conflict, however,
was ensured by the coincidence of the Pretoria-Jerusalem axis at the very time
that liberation circles were framing their struggle in terms of an attack on global
imperialism that was centered on the United States and Israel. By the 1980s,
antisemitism—intimately linked to anti-Zionism—appeared to be deeply rooted.
Taj Hargey, a Muslim academic, explained the connection in terms of an “incom-
petent clergy” that was unable to deal with Zionism intellectually and rationally
and thus resorted to “sheer emotive” antisemitism. “So they go onto the Protocols
of the Elders of Zion. They mention other scurrilous material, usually long noses,
being stingy—the Shylock imagery of Jews.” ⁶¹
One sees here a range of attitudes, a “cultural code,” to use Shulamit Volkov’s
terminology.⁶² Volkov was referring to a cluster of ideas widely shared by Germans

59 In this regard, it is noteworthy that Yasir Arafat was applauded when he equated Zionism
with racism in an address he gave before the South African parliament in August 1998.
60 See interview with Ebrahim Rasool in Hoffman and Fischer, Jews in South Africa, 115.
61 See interview with Taj Hargey, ibid., 155.
62 See Shulamit Volkov, “Antisemitism as a Cultural Code: Reflections on the History and
Historiography of Antisemitism in Imperial Germany,” Leo Baeck Year Book 33 (1978): 25–46.
148 Milton Shain and Margo Bastos

from the 1890s, including old-style nationalism, a conservative anti-emancipa-

tory worldview, and antisemitism. In contrast, the Muslim cultural code incorpo-
rated anti-imperialism, a general rejection of Western liberalism, capitalism, and
socialism, and a virulent anti-Zionism. In both the German and the South African
cases, antisemitism was a shorthand label for a batch of ideas.
Given this package, it is easy to see the connections between anti-Zionism and
antisemitism. Classic anti-Jewish motifs are often embedded in Muslim anti-Zion-
ist discourse and propaganda. For some Muslim critics, Zionists are diabolically
evil and hatred for Israel goes beyond the bounds of normal political conflict.
Consider Achmed Deedat, author of Arabs and Israel: Conflict or Conciliation?
(1989), who runs the Islamic Propagation Centre International in Durban. This
is a well-funded organization, reportedly aided by the Bin Laden family, that for
decades has disseminated anti-Hindu, anti-Christian, anti-Zionist, and antise-
mitic leaflets to thousands of households.⁶³ With regard to Jews, the emphasis
is on power, cunning, and duplicity—themes that were underscored by Bernard
Lewis in his attempt to unravel the nexus between antisemitism and anti-Zion-
ism.⁶⁴ Here, as elsewhere, it is clear that South African Muslim hostility is not
confined to anti-Zionism. At one march in Cape Town, for example, Darwood
Khan, a member of the African National Congress regional executive, was heard
shouting, “Hitler should have killed all the Jews.” ⁶⁵
The narrow line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism is also evident in
Holocaust denial, which in recent years has made an appearance among the
South African Muslim community. In March 1997, for instance, a program on a
Qibla-oriented Muslim radio station in Cape Town suggested that the Holocaust
was exaggerated and that the peace process in the Middle East was an American
Zionist swindle.⁶⁶ A year later, the same radio station featured an interview with
Yaqub Zaki, a British Muslim ideologue who claimed that the “million plus” Jews
who died during the Second World War had succumbed to infectious disease.
Zaki, spends much of his time engaged in elaborate speculation concerning
Jewish conspiracies; for instance, that the Bolshevik Revolution was funded
by the Jewish banking firm of Kuhn, Loeb, and Company; or that Woodrow
Wilson was an adulterer whom Jews threatened to expose in order to promote

63 See The Mercury, 26 Sept. 1998; Shain, “South Africa,” American Jewish Year Book 97
(1997): 420; and Allie A. Dubb and Milton Shain, “South Africa,” American Jewish Year Book 92
(1992): 413.
64 See Bernard Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites (New York, 1986), 237.
65 See Allie E. Dubb and Milton Shain, “South Africa,” American Jewish Year Book 95 (1995):
362.
66 Ibid.
 Muslim Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in Postwar South Africa 149

their nefarious goals; and that the Freemasons, controlled by Jewish financiers,
were the force behind the Balfour Declaration, insisting that Communism and
Zionism were opposite sides of the same coin. The ultimate insult was provided
by the radio interviewer, who expressed hope that “tonight’s in-depth analysis of
Zionism in Israel has cleared the opacity that there might have been with regard
to what truth is and what falsity is.” ⁶⁷
There can be little doubt that Muslim-Jewish relations have deteriorated in
the past three decades. On the one hand, the Muslim community should not be
viewed as a monolith. As noted, various intellectual discourses can be heard
within the community, some of them innovative and “progressive,” with an
emphasis on Islamic humanism, universalism, and interfaith cooperation. On the
other hand, all Muslim groups share a hostile critique of Zionism. In some cases
this hostility is separated from antisemitism; in others, Zionism and Judaism are
conflated into a combination that incorporates notions of international Jewish
finance and imperialism.⁶⁸ This phenomenon was noted more than a decade
ago by Farid Esack. “Nothing that the Jews do will be enough for Muslims,” he
explained, when asked if Jews would be accepted by the Muslim community if
they renounced all recognition and support for Israel.⁶⁹
Esack’s depressing assessment still seems to hold. At one end are conser-
vative Muslim forces, battered by the impact of democracy and liberalism, who
seek an Islamic solution to their community’s problems—refusing to recognize
the post-apartheid state even as they take advantage of South Africa’s newfound
tolerance and freedom.⁷⁰ At the other end are the majority of Muslims who wish
to accommodate Islam within the secular South African state.⁷¹ The battle lines
between these two stands are evident in the PAGAD phenomenon. Beginning
with marches and action against criminals, the movement then moved into the
terrain of punishing “religious gangsters.” In September 1998, the home of a pro-
gressive Islamic scholar, Ibraheem Mousa, was firebombed. This sort of action,

67 Interview with Yaqub Zaki, “Prime Talk,” 8 May 1998.

68 For an analysis of this conflation beyond South Africa, see Joseph Nevo, “Zionism Versus
‘Judaism’ in Palestine Historiography,” in Medieval and Modern Perspectives on Muslim-Jewish
Relations, ed. Ronald L. Nettler (Luxembourg, 1995).
69 See interview with Farid Esack in Hoffman and Fischer, Jews in South Africa, 128.
70 See Abdulkader I. Tayob, “Jihad against Drugs in Cape Town: A Discourse-Centered
Analysis,” Social Dynamics 22, no. 2 (1996): 27–28.
71 See Suren Pillay, “Globalization, Identity and the Politics of Good and Evil: Re-presenting
Gangsters and Pagad” (M.A. thesis, University of the Western Cape, 1998), 3.
150 Milton Shain and Margo Bastos

coupled with general threats and other forms of violence, generated a ground-
swell of feeling against PAGAD.⁷²
The current lines of division appear to replicate those of the early 1980s: inter-
faith cooperation versus an “Islamic solution.” It is possible that those seeking
cooperation with other faiths will gain the upper hand and rid the Muslim com-
munity of vigilantes who, in the final analysis, pose a serious threat to the very
community they wish to protect. Attitudes toward the “Other” are embedded in
this struggle. Should the accomodationists win, interfaith cooperation and the
building of bridges between the Muslim and Jewish communities is a possibil-
ity. Jewish behavior, however, seems far less relevant in this equation. Muslim–
Jewish relations in South Africa have been defined by processes largely beyond
Jewish behavior or actions. Indeed, it is changes within the wider polity, both
in the global and South African sense and in the specifically Muslim sense, that
have in essence defined and informed Muslim attitudes and behavior.

Epilogue
Given the emergence of Holocaust denial, together with the conspiratorial cast
of mind, the opening of the Cape Town Holocaust Centre in 1999 posed an
obvious challenge for Jameel McWilliams, a reporter from Muslim Views, who
was amongst a group of reporters invited to an opening press briefing. Despite
an attempt to be balanced in an article on the exhibition, McWilliams suggested
underlying notions of Jewish culpability while hinting at Holocaust denial.
Thus he explained that he was sorry more attention had not been devoted to the
Weimar period, which he believed would have provided an understanding of Hit-
ler’s actions. “The hyper-inflation is one [reason for the collapse of the Weimar
republic and Hitler’s subsequent rise to power], because rightly or wrongly, the
Jews were blamed for it.” While admitting to being moved by visuals of the death
camps, McWilliams nevertheless argued that these camps were the subject of con-
troversy. “A lively ‘numbers game’ has long been in play, and the exact purposes
of the camps debated,” he noted. Nonetheless, McWilliams did acknowledge that
“even if these things are disputed” the camps were “terrible places.”⁷³

72 Between January and October 1998, there were 165 incidents of urban violence attributed to
PAGAD. See ibid., 99, n. 36; also see Farid Esack’s article, “Not Just the ‘Other’ but Ourselves,”
Cape Times, 16 Sept. 1998.
73 Muslim Views (Aug. 1999).
 Muslim Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in Postwar South Africa 151

In a subsequent series of articles in Muslim Views, McWilliams made clear his

real sentiments about the Holocaust. Global conspiracies, Zionist imperialism,
Jewish dishonesty, and Holocaust denial all came to the fore. To be sure, McWil-
liams introduced “revisionist” historiography and questioned the sacred nature
of the “six million” figure—a form of “Holy Writ” as he put it. For those wishing
to face the “truth,” The Myth of the Six Million by Feygele Peltel Myendzizshetski;
The Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Arthur Butz; The Six Million Swindle by
Austin Joseph Rapp; and Did Six Million Really Die? by Richard Harwood were
recommended.⁷⁴ Issues of hygiene in the camps were introduced for those reflect-
ing upon the “legendary figure of six million Jews dead in the Holocaust,” and
stress was placed on non-Jewish victims of the Nazis. “Auschwitz was crowded by
people who had only the most basic idea of hygiene. The result was the spread of
disease, especially typhus, which is caused by lice,” wrote McWilliams. “So how
many really did die?” he asked:

Probably this can never be known with certainly, but it is an interesting fact that the Yar
Vashim [sic] memorial in Jerusalem lists about one and a quarter million. What happened to
the other four and three quarter million? Debunkers of the Six Million Myth, who describe it
as the biggest hoax since the Donation of Constantine…generally concur that approximately
one million Jews died in the camps from all causes.
If six million did indeed die in the camps, the probability is high that most of them
were non-Jews.

McWilliams went on to explain that the furnaces at Auschwitz were necessary to

burn dead bodies to prevent the spread of disease. “We are constantly reminded
of the suffering of the Jews by the media, by Hollywood, particularly Steven Spiel-
berg. But where is the evidence that the Germans gassed six million Jews? Was
there even a deliberate policy of extermination by the Nazis of European Jewry?”⁷⁵
As noted above, Holocaust denial is a form of antisemitism and intricately
tied to the anti-Zionist struggle. Thus it is not surprising that McWilliams accused
Zionists of creating a guilt syndrome and repeating “the ‘Six Million’ like a
mantra, the chanting of which becomes more intense with the passing of time.
It is now more than half a century since the camps were liberated and one would
have expected voices to have been louder then rather than now. Could it have
something to do with the desire and necessity to present Israel to the world as
a legitimate state?”⁷⁶ In the final article in the series, McWilliams discussed the

74 Muslim Views (Nov. 1999).

75 Muslim Views (Jan. 2000).
76 Ibid.
152 Milton Shain and Margo Bastos

silence and skepticism of the Catholic Church with regard to the Holocaust as well
as the use of the “Six Million” as a “red herring” to divert attention from Israeli
“aggression” against the Palestinians. Regarding the Vatican, McWilliams sug-
gested that the very silence of Pope Pius XII was an indication that the Holocaust
never occurred. It was, he maintained, too big an operation to be conducted in
secrecy and the Vatican “would have known about it and would have spoken out,
but it didn’t.”
The nexus between Holocaust denial and anti-Zionism was again apparent
when McWilliams claimed Zionists invariably justified “driving the Arabs out of
Palestine” by reference to “the legend of the Six Million.” “But what is so special
about the suffering of the European Jews?” he asked. “What about the rest of us
who lived for five years under Nazi occupation? What about all the other inmates
of the concentration camps who died in them, possibly outnumbering Jews by
far? What about the three million plus who died in occupied Europe? One could
go on and on and yet we are constantly bombarded by the media with reminders
of Six Million.” In an attempt to consolidate his thesis, McWilliams noted that the
“disgusting treatment which has been meted out to the Palestinian Arabs would
cause an international outcry if indulged in by anyone other than the Zionists.
But how often do we hear about Deir Yassin, Sabra and Shatilla, in which entire
Arab villages were massacred?”⁷⁷
Muslim anger and conspiratorial thinking in South Africa reached a new
apogee just before and during the United Nations World Conference against
Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerances (WCAR) in
Durban in August 2001. Aided by what was palpably huge international support,
the occasion turned into “an extension of the Arab-Israeli conflict,” and an oppor-
tunity “to insert wording into draft resolutions portraying Israel and Zionism as
racist and minimizing Jewish suffering and anti-Semitism.” South Africa was a
tempting context in which to equate Zionism with racism, especially given apart-
heid South Africa’s ties with the Jewish State.⁷⁸
Prior to the conference Cape Town witnessed a 15,000-strong Muslim march
in Cape Town that brought the city to a halt. The group marched to parliament to
protest against what they termed atrocities committed against the Palestinians
by Israel. The march was clearly part of a build up to the UN conference and
included banners proclaiming Zionism as Racism and Sharon as a war criminal.
Hamas was praised in the united struggle against Zionism. Sheik Achmat Sedick,
secretary general of the MJC, appealed to the South African government to restore

77 Muslim Views (Feb. 2000).

78 South African Jewish Report, 13 July 2001.
 Muslim Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in Postwar South Africa 153

the “Zionism is Racism” resolution to the agenda of the WCAR and called for
South Africans to “take immediate action against Israel by breaking off all diplo-
matic and trade relations”⁷⁹
It became obvious as the conference approached that it would be, in the words
of the SA Jewish Report editorial, “A Jamboree of Hypocrisy.” Rather than dealing
constructively with “the international scourge of racism” the gathering would
be “a jamboree of resentment, hatred and narrow politics”, noted the Jewish
weekly.⁸⁰ Shortly before the Conference the Jewish Board of Deputies lodged a
strongly-worded complaint with the South African Non-Governmental Orga-
nization Coalition, the official coordinating body of South African NGOs, after
several of its representatives visited the Palestinian territories in early July on a
“fact finding mission” as guests of a pro-Palestinian group. The group declined
to meet with Israeli officials and afterwards publicly attacked Israel, despite not
having the right to make political statements on behalf of all South African NGOs.
Predictably the NGO Forum of the Conference lambasted Israel in an ugly
display of venom and anti-Zionism. According to Lara Grawitz, the South African
Union of Jewish Students Zionist Officer, “neutral” delegations were influenced
by the Palestinian media campaign at the youth summit. Attempts to present a
positive view of Zionism were drowned out by Palestinian conference-goers who
pushed the equation of Zionism with Racism and Israel as an apartheid state.
The Jewish case was rapidly sidelined.⁸¹
Although the conference was an international event, local Muslim groups
threw in their lot with the anti-Zionist feeding frenzy. This was “anti-Semitism
in the guise of anti-Zionism,” exclaimed Marlene Bethlehem, national president
of the Jewish Board of Deputies, when commenting on the conference. Various
other Jewish spokespersons condemned the charade. Judge Dennis Davis noted
that the conference omitted the question of Israel’s security and instead replaced
South Africa with Israel as an apartheid society. “The onslaught on Israel and the
Jewish people is an absolute scandal and it is racism and anti-Semitism of the
worst kind,” explained Mervyn Smith, former national president of the Jewish
Board of Deputies. “It is a mobilization of sentiment that knows no emotional or
hypocritical barriers.”⁸²
The irony of a conference meant to combat racism and prejudice turning into
a “hate-fest” was not lost on the SA Jewish Report. The result, it noted laconically,

79 Ibid.
80 South African Jewish Report, 3 Aug. 2001.
81 South African Jewish Report, 14 Sept. 2001.
82 South African Jewish Report, 31 Aug. 2001.
154 Milton Shain and Margo Bastos

“has been to demonstrate how alive and potent one of the most ancient forms of
racism—anti-Semitism—is, in that it can be spread by formal international bodies
like the UN.”⁸³ “Radical Islam is on the march, and Israel has been identified as
the ‘little Satan’ and lumped together with America, the ‘big Satan.’ Both are seen
as enemies to be destroyed at all costs in a holy war,” noted the SA Jewish Report
three weeks later.⁸⁴ The sale of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion at the confer-
ence, distributed through the Muslim-run Ahlul Bait Foundation of South Africa,
confirmed this judgment.
Given the cast of mind evident at Durban, it is not surprising that, following
the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pen-
tagon, conspiratorial ideas were taken further by Muslim commentators. After the
initial perfunctory condemnation of the attacks, Muslim Views declared with the
use of familiar rhetoric that the occasion was a “defining moment for Muslims.”
The United States was criticized for its “Islamophobic” reaction and accusatory
claims were made against media coverage in the wake of the event. The “almost
immediate naming of Bin Laden as chief suspect and Islamophobic reactions
around the world,” was condemned and the United States was accused of polariz-
ing the international community. Third World and Islamic countries were consid-
ered potential targets of United States retaliation. This would, explained Muslim
Views, exacerbate conflict in the Middle East. While offering sympathy to the
victims and their families, the MYM and MJC warned against “hasty conclusions,
especially after the discovery of the true perpetrator of the Oklahoma bombing.”
The Media Review Network, an Islamic group, merely expressed concern that
“Muslim terrorists” would be unfairly blamed.
As the analysis continued, Muslims criticized television coverage for being
dominated by CNN and local talk shows were accused of “displaying a fair level
of ignorance and prejudice of Islam and Muslims.” No mention was made of the
numbers killed in the attacks, although readers of Muslim Views were provided
with a report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations stating that there
had been three hundred attacks on Muslims in America and that the FBI had
harassed American Muslims in a mosque. In short, the emphasis of Muslim
comment was not on the horrific nature of the attack but rather on the repercus-
sions for Muslims. Thus attacks on Muslims and racial profiling on airlines were
the focus of comment; the FBI’s implication of 19 suspects with Middle Eastern
names was questioned. According to Muslim Views, Western hysteria masked
any realization of the “real reason that America was attacked” and stopped any

83 7 September 2001.
84 South African Jewish Report, 28 Sept. 2001.
 Muslim Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism in Postwar South Africa 155

serious need to reflect on what the “US government is doing in the world.”⁸⁵
Invariably Zionist connections were identified. Ibn Al Fikr captured that nexus in
a letter to Muslim Views which reminded readers that “the pilots who hijacked the
planes are war criminals no less than Ariel Sharon. The main difference is they
are dead and Sharon is still running amok in occupied Palestine. He continues to
murder innocent civilians just as they did.”⁸⁶
Sharon has, of course, been in a coma for the past seven years, but the nexus
between Holocaust denial, anti-Zionism, and antisemitism remains evident. In
the wake of the Danish cartoon fiasco, a huge Muslim protest march took place
in Cape Town. Although incendiary anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist speeches were
reportedly nipped in the bud, there were displays of posters denying the Holo-
caust. “The biggest myths: Israel, the Holocaust, Freedom, Democracy” was
inscribed on one poster, neatly capturing the Islamist worldview. What this had
to do with a protest against cartoons bearing Muhammad’s name evidently per-
plexed a reporter for a major Afrikaans-language daily. In an article, “Is it once
again okay not to like the Jews?,” he noted that one person in the crowd explained
that such placards were in order because Jews should not be allowed to make
cartoons of Muslims. The Danes and the Jews, he continued, were all in the same
boat.⁸⁷

85 Muslim Views (Sept. 2001).

86 Ibid.
87 Die Berger, 18 Feb. 2006.
Danny Ben-Moshe
Holocaust Denial in Australia
The nature of Australian Holocaust denial organizations, their activities, and
their place in broader far Right circles differs from similar groups in other coun-
tries. This is explained by the dominant role of the Australian League of Rights
in far Right politics, the libertarian origins of the Australian Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU), the lack of sizeable neo-Nazi groups in Australia, and the dominance
of anti-Aboriginal and anti-Asian issues on the far Right agenda. Unlike many
European countries where denial is explained as a response to their wartime col-
laboration with the Nazis, this motive does not exist in Australia, which fought
against the Nazis and their allies.
Although Holocaust denial is a fringe activity in Australia, it has significantly
increased over the last two decades with a concomitant growth in collaboration
between Australian and overseas Holocaust deniers, led by the three main holo-
caust denial organizations in Australia; the Australian League of Rights, the Aus-
tralian Civil Liberties Union, and the Adelaide Institute. However, until the 1980s
there was only one racist group for whom Holocaust denial was a central focus—
the Australian League of Rights (hereafter the League). They challenged the
“Holocaust hoax” long before it gained momentum in Europe and North America
during the 1970s and, unlike the Australian Civil Liberties Union and Adelaide
Institute, rather than copying the ideas and activities of overseas deniers, the
League developed their own.
According to historian Hilary Rubenstein, “by the 1950s Holocaust denial
was a frequent component of League of Rights propaganda” (a process overseen
by Eric Dudley Butler who established the organization in 1946 and led it until
his semi-retirement in 1991), a period in which he dominated Australian far Right
politics.¹ The Holocaust was explained after 1945 by Eric Butler as “a propaganda
offensive from start to finish.”²
The League’s general ideology was based on the social credit, anti-collec-
tivist, and antisemitic notions developed in the 1930s by discredited British
economist C. H. Douglas. He had explained the Depression, and his social credit
alternative, in terms of real power being vested in the hands of the financiers—
supposedly Jews bent on world domination.

1 Rubenstein, Hilary, “Early Manifestations of Holocaust Denial in Australia,” Australian Jewish

Historical Society Journal 14, no. 1 (Nov. 1997): 93–109.
2 New Times, Jan. 1991.
158 Danny Ben-Moshe

The League’s antisemitism in general, and Holocaust denial in particular,

was a logical result of Butler’s theological world view. The “theological” frame-
work which explains the League’s Holocaust denial is illustrated in Butler’s three-
page article “The ‘Jewish Holocaust.’ Threat to Christianity” which shows that his
denial was motivated by an attempt to exonerate Christian complicity in antisem-
itism and especially the Holocaust. He writes

If as Zionist propagandists are insisting, the alleged “Holocaust” during the Second World
War was the culmination of two thousand years of Christian persecution of the Jewish
people, and the roots of “anti-semitism” are to be found in “The New Testament,” partic-
ularly St. Mathew’s gospel and that Christians everywhere must accept collective guilt for
the systematic gassing of millions of Jews in German concentration camps, it is the duty of
Christians to face the far-reaching implications of the “The Holocaust” issue. The first thing
that must be said is that the “holocaust” issue is not simply one of history but has become
a religious question, one of a faith which ignores any evidence suggesting that the “holo-
caust” story may be false.³

With an estimated 2,000 activists in the League, Holocaust denial has been sup-
ported by the organization’s core supporters, although the less active would have
been attracted to the League for its other political activities, for example lobbying
on issues such as the debate about whether Australia should become a republic.

Holocaust Denial and Civil Liberties

The Australian Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) headed by John Bennett was the
second organization established in Australia for which Holocaust denial became
a primary objective. The ACLU’s main strategy is to campaign for Holocaust denial
as a freedom of speech and civil liberties issue. Bennett, a retired lawyer in his
late sixties, claims he used to believe in the Holocaust until he read Arthur Butz’s
1977 book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, recalling “it was if the blinders had
been lifted from my eyes.”⁴ He added: “I believe, as a lawyer, that allegations—
especially those which cause offence to an ethnic group, in this case, Germans—
should not be made without supporting evidence.”⁵
Bennett achieved national coverage for denial in 1979 when the National
Times newspaper published a 13-point memorandum he was preparing to send

3 New Times, May 1995.

4 Supplement to Spotlight, 3 Mar. 1980.
5 Your Rights, March 1998.
 Holocaust Denial in Australia 159

to academics based on the thesis of American professor Arthur Butz and that
of other deniers he had read, such as Robert Faurisson and Helmut Diwald.⁶
Later that year Bennett made his first trip outside of Australia to attend the first
international “Revisionist Convention” in Los Angeles organized by the Califor-
nian-based Institute for Historical Review (IHR).⁷ Bennett said of his participa-
tion, “As a bored public servant I just find it intellectually stimulating.... I’m a
detached cynic.... [W]e’re in very short supply in this conformist society.”⁸ His
participation in the conference led to increased involvement with the IHR, and
his becoming an Editorial Advisory Committee member of IHR’s Journal of His-
torical Review.
Bennett’s embrace of denial led to his 1980 suspension and eventual removal
from the Victorian Council of Civil Liberties (VCCL). He had been Honorary Sec-
retary of the VCCL since 1966, but its leadership was concerned that his personal
views would be seen as those of the VCCL.⁹ By 1984 he established the ACLU, a
name which has worked to Bennett’s advantage, for while the League is taboo,
many unsuspecting media and politicians have assumed the ACLU is indeed a
bona fide civil liberties organization for whom they have provided a platform.
The ACLU is a small organization run from Bennett’s home,¹⁰ and Holocaust
denial appears to be part of his broader worldview. However, through his wide-
ly-available annual civil liberties guide, Your Rights, the media seek his com-
mentary on freedom of speech issues, and other Holocaust deniers take his legal
counsel when their freedom of speech is curtailed.

Fredrick Toben and the Adelaide Institute

Although the Adelaide Institute is the most recently established of the three Holo-
caust-denying organizations, its founder and director, Fredrick Toben is Austra-
lia’s best-known Holocaust denier. The Adelaide Institute adds to the political
work of the League and the legal work of the ACLU by offering a quasi-historical
dimension to Holocaust denial, although none of its leaders are trained histori-
ans.

6 Rubenstein, “Early Manifestations,” 93.

7 ADL Facts, June 1980.
8 The Bulletin, 18 Sept. 1979.
9 The Age, 2 Apr. 1980.
10 Bennett, letter to Without Prejudice, 10 Apr. 1991, claimed 400 members in 1991, although
only about 50 attended the organization’s AGM during this period, The Age, 6 Oct. 1990.
160 Danny Ben-Moshe

Toben came to national attention in April 1999, when he was arrested after
presenting Holocaust denial material to a state prosecutor in Germany, where
denying the mass murder of European Jewry took place is considered a crimi-
nal offence. While his supporters presented him as a “martyr for truth,” it is far
more plausible that he wanted to remake himself as Australia’s David Irving.¹¹
After a three-day trial in November 1999, Toben was convicted and sentenced
to ten months in prison. Having already served seven months in a Mannheim
prison while awaiting trial, he was freed after paying 6000 Deutschmarks (AUS
$5000).¹² These events, and a finding against him by the Australian Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in 2001 that material on his Inter-
net site breached the 1995 Racial Hatred Act by denigrating Jews, succeeded in
placing Holocaust denial, in the Australian public arena in the same way actions
against Ernst Zündel did in Canada in the 1980s. Toben documented his views
and experiences in his book, Fight or Flight: the Personal Face of Revisionism.
Toben emerged as a player in the international “revisionist” movement with
Willis Carto, describing him as “the pre-eminent Australian holocaust denier.”¹³
His activities were reported in varying degrees by Ernst Zündel and the IHR. The
Adelaide Institute Internet site is one of six that Bradley Smith’s Committee for
Open Debate on the Holocaust highlighted in their “revisionist archive.”¹⁴
Toben had arrived in Australia in 1945 with his family from Germany as a
one-year-old. After gaining undergraduate degrees from Melbourne University in
Australia and Wellington University in New Zealand, he undertook postgraduate
studies in Germany, receiving a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stuttgart University. In
advancing Holocaust denial he portrays himself, his ideas, and his organization
in academic terms. “I wrote my thesis on Karl Popper” he claims, “and I therefore
cannot accept closed thinking.”¹⁵
His denial extends beyond the Holocaust, with Toben arguing,

The mind-set of those who believe in the existence of homicidal gas chambers is the same
as that of scientists who believe in the HIV equals AIDS hypothesis. It is a deeply totalitar-
ian mind-set which lacks the flexibility and honesty that is the hall-mark of truly civilised
people.”¹⁶

11 http://www.adelaideinstitute.org accessed 13 Nov. 1999.

12 Sydney Morning Herald, 13 Nov. 1999.
13 http://www.williscarto.com/toben.html accessed 8 July 2002.
14 wysiwyg://13/http://vho.org/Archive.html accessed 3 July 2002.
15 Letter to B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission, 2 Nov. 1990.
16 Truth Missions, 2 May 1994.
 Holocaust Denial in Australia 161

Toben was an employee of the Victoria Department of Education and Training in

Melbourne until his dismissal in 1985 on grounds of incompetence and disobedi-
ence, a move he challenged and claims to have won in the courts.¹⁷ After driving
a school bus for four years, he gained relief work in Adelaide where he settled,
with the Adelaide Institute being his full-time occupation for several years.
Unemployed, Toben began to move in far Right circles, specifically that of the
League, whose 1990 national seminar he addressed on the subject of Aboriginal
land rights and multiculturalism.¹⁸ His involvement with the League would have
undoubtedly exposed him to their views on Holocaust denial, and subsequently
on February 9, 1994 he produced a one-page flyer called Truth Missions which was
handed to members of Adelaide’s Jewish community attending a charity premier
of Schindler’s List. By June 1994, Truth Missions was renamed the Adelaide Insti-
tute—a Holocaust-denying publication which evolved into an organization of the
same name and objective, offering conferences, speakers, and the most compre-
hensive Australian denial Internet site.
To add credibility to his cause, Toben modeled the name of his publication
and organization on the respected think-tank, the Sydney Institute. This strat-
egy has been vindicated, with the Adelaide Institute referred to in the media as
a think-tank, and with Toben described as a historian, despite having no formal
history qualifications. Unlike the League or the ACLU, the estimated 250 members
of the Adelaide Institute are dedicated Holocaust deniers. As with the ACLU, the
Adelaide Institute is run inexpensively out of Toben’s suburban home, with
income generated through membership fees, and some members being in a posi-
tion to provide extra financial support.¹⁹

Antisemitism
All three groups of deniers claim that they are engaged in historical enquiry and
open debate. However, a broader analysis demonstrates clear hostility toward
Jews. Indeed, the evidence suggests that their Holocaust denial is an extension
of their antisemitism. This is particularly glaring in their reliance on and belief in
the authenticity of the Protocols. This is indeed a logical part of Holocaust denial

17 http://www.adam.com.au/fredadin/travel_diary.html accessed 4 Dec. 1999.

18 New Times, Nov. 1990.
19 Adelaide Institute associate Michael Mazur, for instance, pledged to financially assist their
international conference described below (Adelaide Institute, no. 80 [Oct. 1998]).
162 Danny Ben-Moshe

philosophy, for if the Shoah did not happen there must have been a massive
worldwide Jewish conspiracy to perpetuate the fraud.
The Protocols were published in Melbourne in 1945 by the social credit move-
ment,²⁰ and a year later, Butler authored The International Jew—an Australian
version of the false document. While conceding that the authenticity of the Pro-
tocols may be disputed, Butler clearly endorsed its portrayal of the Jewish plot
for global control. The League became the main Australian distributor of the
Protocols, viewing events through its prism of a global Jewish conspiracy. ACLU
vice-president Jonathan Graham regularly refers readers to the Protocols in his
column in the far Right publication, The Strategy, claiming it is “not a forgery but
a blueprint which can be seen being put into action....”²¹
Toben’s deputy until November 2000 was the Berlin-born David Brockschmidt,
who had an unusual background for a Holocaust denier. His parents were
declared Righteous Among the Nations for helping supply trucks to Oscar Schin-
dler during the war, and he spent eleven years working for the British army in the
Rhine region as a civilian, and two years in Israel from 1977–1979 before settling
in Australia.²² Brockschmidt describes “the schemes of the International Jews”
engaged in a “world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilisation and for the
reconstruction of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malev-
olence, and impossible equality.”²³ This is based on his belief in “the cunning and
crafty behaviour of powerful Jewish groups in the financial world, in the world
media, in global culture, in world politics and in practically all aspects of life,”²⁴
while simultaneously referring to the “anti-Gentile Babylonian Talmud” as “the
root of evil.”²⁵
In Tasmania, the Adelaide Institute’s Olga Scully has made the distribution
of the Protocols a regular part of the Adelaide Institute’s work, together with car-
toons portraying ugly hooked-nose Jews sitting on piles of money and tricking the
world into their conspiracy.²⁶ When distribution of the Protocols led to a hearing

20 Rodney Gouttman, “The Protocols and the Printer,” Journal of Australian Jewish Historical
Societies 11 (1990): 155–59.
21 The Strategy, June 1999.
22 Intelligence Survey, July 1995.
23 Adelaide Institute, Aug. 1995.
24 Open letter to the leaders of world Jewry, 20 June 1996, http://www.adam.com.au/fredadin/
worldjew.html accessed 2 Nov. 1998.
25 Ibid.
26 Australian Jewish News, 16 Oct. 1998.
 Holocaust Denial in Australia 163

before the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission, Scully claimed
the “ truth” of the Protocols as her defense.²⁷
Equally, the Australian far Right have long maintained opposition to Commu-
nism as a central focus of their ideology. As an anti-imperialist movement, Com-
munism was opposed to the British Empire with which the far Right was closely
identified. Moreover, Communism’s anti-racist agenda meant additional rights
for Aborigines and Asians and a broad cosmopolitanism. Furthermore, until the
collapse of the former Soviet Union, the Communist threat to Australia from Asia
was regarded with genuine concern. For the extremist Right, Communism was
seen as a Jewish movement, which deniers argued was advanced through the
“Holocaust myth.”
As an organization dedicated to the British Empire and the Crown, the myths
of antisemitic anti-Communism were a key ideological component of the League’s
rationale. For example, in 1943 Father Patrick Gearson, a Melbourne-based pro-
fessor of theology who became a prominent League supporter, authored Com-
munism Unmasked under the pseudonym Jean Patrice. Describing Communism
as being “a Jewish movement inspired by Satan and hence diabolically clever,”
early editions of the book focused on Jewish communist “atrocities.” Since 1970,
this work has been published and distributed by the League, and is unequivocal
in its denial of the Holocaust. In The War Behind The War (1940), Butler argued
that the avenue through which Jews achieved power since the French Revolution
was through socialism. Antisemitism and anti-Communism thus became a com-
plementary focus of League activity.
The Adelaide Institute and the ACLU also adhere to the belief in a direct link
between Judaism and Communism. In the words of Brockschmidt, “there is a
philosophical and religious link between Talmudic Judaism and Marxism-Lenin-
ism.”²⁸ Equally, for former ACLU secretary and Adelaide Institute Associate, Geoff
Muriden, Bolshevism “was a Jewish creation maintained by Jews, which would
make them liable for the murders, tortures and slavery committed in its name.”²⁹
Thus the deniers turn the Jews from victims into aggressors. For example,
Brockschmidt and Muriden brazenly refer to the “Bolshevik-Jewish holocausts.”³⁰
Family experience explains why some individuals subscribe to denial.
Explaining how her family fled to Germany from Russia where they were well
looked after, Scully says

27 http://www.adam.com.au/fredadin/media_release_olga_scully_01.html
28 Adelaide Institute, Aug. 1995.
29 Ibid.
30 Adelaide Advertiser, 26 Oct. 1995; New Times, Apr. 1995.
164 Danny Ben-Moshe

If I can do a little bit to repay that, then I will because we would have all died if it had not
been for them, yet whenever you read about them they are all Nazis who gas 6 million Jews
and it’s a whole lot of lies.³¹

Little is known about Toben’s family background, although being of German

origin he appears to reflect the motivations of deniers, minimizers, and relativists
in Germany that want to dissociate the name of Germany from the events of the
Second World War. Bennett is not known to be of German origin but he has a
strong affiliation to the country, claiming in 1999 to have visited there for ten of
the previous twelve years.³²

Operating Methods

The Holocaust deniers disseminate their views in a multitude of ways, but irre-
spective of the methods employed their arguments are repackaged versions of
those devised by European and North American deniers. As such, Australian
deniers add little to the ideas of their overseas peers and they are highly depen-
dent on them. Their main claims are:
– The six million figure is a myth perpetuated to achieve Zionist goals in
Palestine, with Bennett arguing that in 1938 “there were only 6.5 million
Jews in Europe,” and the actual number of Jews to die in the War was about
500,000.³³
– There is no “proof,” according to Toben, that even those 500,000 were
murdered, for there was no policy of extermination. Bennett explains that
the 1942 Wannsee Conference, at which the Final Solution was agreed upon,
“refers to the evacuation to the East not to extermination.”³⁴
– The victims, according to Bennett, actually died from disease, most notably
typhus.³⁵ Toben asserts that this explains the presence of Zyklon B, for
rather than kill Jews by gassing it was, as Bennett concurs, used to kill the
disease that threatened them.³⁶ The League claims 100,000 died of dis-
ease.³⁷

31 Ibid.
32 Wimmera Mail Times, 7 June 1999.
33 Melbourne Times, 10 Feb. 1982.
34 Your Rights (1993).
35 Toorak Times, 16 Mar. 1988.
36 Ibid.
37 New Times, May 1995.
 Holocaust Denial in Australia 165

– The Adelaide Institute asserts that there were no gas chambers,³⁸ and the
ACLU states they were “reconstructed or fabricated” after the war.³⁹
– The Holocaust was created, according to the League, to justify the formation
of the State of Israel.⁴⁰
– The Germans were victims, not persecutors, in what Toben describes as the
“Dresden Holocaust.”⁴¹ In a July 1982 letter by Bennett to the University of
Melbourne student newspaper Farrago stating that the only Holocaust was
of a million Germans and Japanese who died as a result of Allied saturation
bombings.⁴²
The ways in which these arguments are advanced by the three denial groups
reflects their differing operating methods. Thus the League’s Holocaust denial
is advanced in their publications, the monthly New Times Survey and the weekly
On Target; it features regular meetings of front organizations, such as the Con-
servative Speakers Club, which are often addressed by Holocaust deniers such
Toben; by selling tapes of lectures given at their forums, in addition to sending
these for free to public libraries; not to mention publishing Holocaust denial
books through their publishing arm Veritas, whose authors include David Irving;
by running Letters to the Editor campaigns; and organizing Australian speaking
tours for overseas deniers.

The ACLU

The ACLU’s main activity is the annual publication of Your Rights which is also
available online, as well as from most local news agencies. The attraction of
this booklet is the succinct summation of legal advice on a range of issues from
tenancy laws to police questioning, but it also exposes purchasers to Holocaust
denial, and to opposition to non-white immigration and Aboriginal reconcilia-
tion. In choosing the name for his organization and publication Bennett hoped
its legitimate sounding title would give it access that would otherwise be denied.
This deceptive suggestion of being a bona fide civil liberties publication, has
secured for Your Rights the promotional quotes which appear on its back cover
from popular magazines like New Idea, Women’s’ Weekly, Vogue, Simply Living,

38 Adelaide Institute, 27 Jan. 1995.

39 Your Rights (1993).
40 On Target, 3 Nov. 2000.
41 Adelaide Institute, 28 Feb. 1995.
42 Farrago, 14 July 1982.
166 Danny Ben-Moshe

and Cosmopolitan. It was even positively reviewed in the journal of the Victorian
Law Institute.⁴³
Despite Your Rights being the subject of Federal Court injunction hearings, an
anti-Discrimination hearing in New South Wales, and having the national book-
seller Angus and Robertson removing it from their shelves, it is likely to remain in
circulation for the foreseeable future.⁴⁴ Thus, a segment of the community which
would not otherwise come across denial material is thereby exposed to it. Pur-
porting to be a civil liberties organization, the ACLU lobbies on legal issues with
a racial dimension.
Like the League, the ACLU succeeds in getting Letters to the Editor pub-
lished and its spokesmen appear as commentators on current affairs programs
on related issues, such as the debate about regulation of the Internet, a subject of
great importance to the far Right as a whole.
The main activity of the Adelaide Institute is the publication of their epony-
mously titled newsletter and its electronic version Adelaide Institute Online. The
hard copy publication is a cheap stapled photocopy, usually consisting of articles
that have appeared in the press in relation to the Holocaust—articles from Holo-
caust-denying websites; and pieces about the Adelaide Institute, especially from
Jewish sources. By comparison, the Institute website, which has always been
more comprehensive and impressive, offers an array of articles, many by Toben,
and photos of him at Auschwitz standing in a gas chamber pointing to holes
where he contends the gas would exit the chamber. After a 2003 legal finding
forced Toben to remove denial material from his website, it has been has been
replaced with general far Right material and anti-Zionist commentary.
Toben, like the IHR, digs into archives to find the “truth” about the Holocaust,
and consistent with international denial efforts since the Leuchter Report, the
Institute also undertakes “scientific” research to prove their case. For example,
with funding from undisclosed sources, Richard Krege, an electronics engineer
in his thirties, went to Treblinka in 1999 where he used ground penetrating radar
to find that soil under which Jews had been buried was undisturbed. This led
him to conclude there were no mass graves there and thus Treblinka was not a
death camp. Indicative of how such “reports” generate media interest, the Can-
berra Times in Australia’s capital city and the Examiner in Tasmania reported his
findings without challenge. Krege’s findings were disseminated on the Internet

43 Law Institute Journal, August 1999.

44 Australian Jewish News, 28 May 1993.
 Holocaust Denial in Australia 167

by the Holocaust Review Press, the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust,
David Irving’s Focal Point, and the IHR.⁴⁵
Toben appears to regard himself as an ambassador-at-large for Holocaust
denial, attending Jewish community meetings, often with other Adelaide Insti-
tute officials. Whenever an opportunity arises, he stands to ask questions and
introduces himself in the process. In April 1998, for example, he joined a tour
at Melbourne’s Holocaust Museum. According to witnesses, he repeatedly chal-
lenged the guide, disputing the assertion that smoke came from the crematoria.
He also claimed that the railway lines into the Birkenau concentration camp were
built after the war. An Auschwitz survivor interjected that he personally saw the
smoke billowing from the crematoria, that he personally traveled on those trains,
and that he had lost his entire family in the Holocaust. Toben remained calm
throughout the exchange, left his Adelaide Institute business card and depart-
ed.⁴⁶
Toben is the main orator on Holocaust denial on the speaker circuit, and has
played a key role in ensuring that denial has become a central belief of the far
Right as whole. He has been very active in writing “Letters to the Editor” and
calling talk-back radio, a very popular form of Australian media. As a result of
his German trial, Toben acquired the highest profile of any Australian denier, and
is often quoted in the media when denial news stories are generated by his legal
cases. His prominence among the Holocaust deniers invited to Tehran by Iranian
President Ahmadinejad in early December 2006 was therefore no surprise.
While the deniers clearly desire academic respectability, they are, in fact,
hostile toward universities. Toben describes how “history departments at our uni-
versities resemble ideological faculties reminiscent of Marxist-Leninist state-run
institutions,”⁴⁷ blasting as “cowards” the many academics who “will be shamed
for having remained silent on the Jewish Holocaust issue” when they know
the truth.⁴⁸ Although there have been no dedicated university campaigns such
as those undertaken by denier Bradley Smith in America, there are four main
aspects to the Australian deniers academic campaign.
First, university libraries are contacted to purchase denial books for their
holdings. Second, historians are engaged in debate about denial. Accordingly,

45 Canberra Times, 24 Jan. 2002; The Examiner, 24 Jan. 2002, http://www.codoh.org/

bbs/messages/2407.html and http://www.fpp.co.uk/Auschwitz/Treblinka/groundscan.
html and http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v19/v19n3p20radar.html all web sites accessed 7 Aug. 2002.
46 ADC Briefing, Sept. 1998.
47 http://www.adam.com.au/fredadin/50-brock.html accessed 2 Nov. 1998.
48 Truth Missions, 14 Mar. 1994.
168 Danny Ben-Moshe

Bennett has written to academics asking for their views on the Holocaust, raising
denial issues and suggesting the availability of Holocaust denial material.
In September 1996, Toben and Brockschmidt repeatedly disrupted an Ade-
laide University continuing education class called Hitler’s Germany: Will History
Repeat?⁴⁹ Third, they expose students to denial literature. Bennett personally dis-
tributed literature in the University of Melbourne Student Union building during
the Jewish student’s Holocaust Awareness Week in April 1998, and he has written
letters to student union papers.⁵⁰ Fourth, they organize Holocaust denial speak-
ers on campus, for example Bennett accompanied David Irving on a talk at Mel-
bourne.⁵¹
Most academics do not engage with deniers, on the basis that debating the
issue with them confers legitimacy on their ideas. Only one academic has openly
identified with them—Dr. William DeMaria, a lecturer at the School of Social
Work and Social Policy at the University of Queensland. However, still hoping
to influence students who have no personal memory of the Second World War
but who will one day become influential members of the Australian community,
deniers have continued their efforts in the universities.
The League, the Adelaide Institute, and the ACLU maintain a close and
complementary relationship. The League has portrayed Bennett as “Australia’s
leading and most influential libertarian,”⁵² while Bennett has praised the League
“for its fight against media censorship on issues such as immigration, multicul-
turalism and finance.”⁵³ Bennett personally attended the testimonial dinner to
mark Butler’s semi-retirement, where he praised his “courage and tenacity.”⁵⁴
Toben, while denying being a League activist, said he held those who were “in
the highest regard” for having “shown a deep concern for the well being of Aus-
tralia.”⁵⁵
The three groups rely on each other for audiences. For example, Bennett
has addressed several League meetings and written for League publications,⁵⁶
while Toben conducted a national speaking tour for the League on his return

49 Australian Jewish News, 29 July 1994.

50 Farrago, 14 July 1982.
51 The Age, 15 Apr. 1986.
52 New Times, July 1992.
53 New Times, Nov. 1989.
54 New Times, July 1992.
55 Letter to Adelaide News which Toben sent to the B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission,
23 Dec. 1991.
56 New Times, 1989.
 Holocaust Denial in Australia 169

from Germany in 2000.⁵⁷ The three organizations similarly rely on each other for
mutual promotion. Tapes of Adelaide Institute and ACLU talks to League meet-
ings are distributed by the League, who also promote Your Rights.⁵⁸ The Adelaide
Institute publishes material by Butler, and ACLU vice president Graham Pember
refers readers of his Strategy column to the League’s On Target⁵⁹ The three orga-
nizations provide other assistance to each other. For example, when the League
arranged screenings of a David Irving video after he was denied entry into Aus-
tralia in 1993, it was Bennett who organized the Melbourne showing,⁶⁰ and when
the League arranged for Canadian lawyer Doug Collins to visit Adelaide as part
of a national speaking tour, the Adelaide Institute was the local contact address.
The three organizations also turn to each other when legal and political
difficulties arise. When Toben was incarcerated in Germany, his deputy David
Brockschmidt addressed the League’s Adelaide Conservative Speakers Club on
the events surrounding Toben’s trial.⁶¹ The ACLU set up a defence fund for Toben’s
German trial which raised $6,000,⁶² and Bennett planned to travel to Germany
to advise Toben during his incarceration.⁶³ The three organizations provide each
other with practical and moral support, a core constituency, and a rationale that
they would otherwise be denied.

International links

The importation into the country of overseas denial and deniers has been fun-
damental to the development of Holocaust “revisionism” in Australia. Given the
limited resources in Australia, deniers from abroad add a dimension that makes
the work of the Australian Holocaust negators more viable as they regularly
publish and refer to the work of their overseas peers. The League has gotten main-
stream media coverage by inviting speakers who attract media attention to Aus-
tralia. This included the 1988 speaking tour of Dr. Robert Countess of Alabama,
an editorial advisory board member of the IHR⁶⁴; and the 1991 visit of the Cana-

57 On Target, 14 Jan. 2000.

58 On Target, 2 Apr. 1984.
59 The Strategy, Mar. 1999.
60 The Age, 20 May 1993.
61 On Target, 28 May 1999.
62 Wimmera Mail-Times, 14 May 1999.
63 Wimmera Mail Times, 7 June 1999.
64 Australia Israel Review, 1–14 Sept. 1988.
170 Danny Ben-Moshe

dian lawyer Douglas Christie who had represented Holocaust deniers such as
Ernst Zündel.
The clearest illustration of the local use of overseas deniers was during the
first Australian Revisionists Conference that took place in August 1998 in Ade-
laide. There were four speakers from overseas, including Butz from America and
Jürgen Graf from Switzerland who delivered the keynote address. Sixteen deniers
participated by video or phone, including Robert Faurisson, Mark Weber, Ahmed
Rami, Ernst Zündel, and Charles Weber.⁶⁵
The relationship between Australian and overseas deniers is mutually bene-
ficial. The overseas negationists increase their sense of relevance, purpose, and
effect. Organizations such as the IHR based in California cite their participation
in Australian activities in order to present themselves as an international orga-
nization. Similarly, the relationship Australian deniers have with their overseas
peers makes them feel that however marginal they are locally, they are relevant
internationally. As an IHR report about the 1998 Adelaide conference stated, “For
some time now, Australia has been one of the most dynamic battlefields in the
worldwide struggle against the historical blackout. And at the forefront of the
battle there is the Adelaide Institute.”⁶⁶
Both Toben and Bennett regularly attend IHR conferences, but the more
active of the two is Toben, who has extensive contacts with deniers across the
globe. His European contacts are well documented in his travel diary of a 1998 trip
to Europe which was devoted to meeting deniers, visiting concentration camps,
including Auschwitz, and delving into archives where his findings merely reaf-
firmed his beliefs. In London he met Germar Rudolf to discuss the involvement
of Adelaide Institute Online in an English language publication Rudolf had been
planning, and he stayed with Rudolf on the farm of British National Party leader
Nick Griffin. In Poland he met with Tomasz Gabis, editor of the magazine Stancyk
which features denial; in Vienna he spent time with Emil Lachout, an engineer
who supposedly “proved” there were no gas chambers; and in France he visited
Robert Faurisson at his home.⁶⁷
In addition to reinforcing Toben’s worldview and providing him with infor-
mation to disseminate in Australia there was a practical dimension to these con-
tacts. Ludwig Bock, who had personally been convicted for Holocaust denial,⁶⁸

65 www.adelaideinstitute.org/newsletters/news80.html and www.adelaideinstitute.org/

newsletters/news81.html accessed 13 July 2000.
66 ihr.org/ihr/v17/v17n6p-6.html accessed 26 June 2000.
67 www.adam.com.au/fredadin/travel_diary.html accessed 4 Dec. 1999.
68 Sydney Morning Herald, 13 Nov. 1999.
 Holocaust Denial in Australia 171

represented Toben during his German trial, and German supporter Eric Rossler
paid the fine imposed on Toben by the German court.⁶⁹

Israel, the Middle East, and the Left

A central thesis of the deniers is that the Holocaust “hoax” was created to justify
ongoing support for the State of Israel. This rationale has led the denial move-
ment to win many adherents in the Middle East. Indeed, there are increasing
links between Australian deniers and Middle Eastern regimes and groups which
support denial. For example, the Libyan regime of Colonel Gaddafi was active in
Australia, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s. Bennett wrote an article for
the first edition of the pro-Libyan magazine The Green March in 1986,⁷⁰ and in
1988 he reportedly traveled to Libya as part of a delegation to sit on a “tribunal”
to “judge” the U.S. bombing of Libya.⁷¹ The ACLU’s Graham Pember liked to refer
readers of his Strategy column to Radio Islam, providing an extremist Islamic
source of denial for Australians to access.
When Toben held his 1998 international denial conference in Adelaide,
the United Arab Emirates Ambassador to Australia attended.⁷² In December
1999, Toben spent three weeks in Iran⁷³ where he lectured on denial to univer-
sity students⁷⁴ and was interviewed by the Tehran Times, which described him
as a “German researcher residing in Australia.”⁷⁵ Since then he was interviewed
from Australia by Iranian television about the Pope’s 2000 visit to Jerusalem,
claiming that “the Jewish politicians are using the Holocaust and the six million
dead figure as a justification for suppressing the Palestinians and for claiming
that Jerusalem is their undivided capital.”⁷⁶ During his attendance at the 2006
Holocaust denial festival in Iran, Toben was again, a prominent figure. Toben
clearly enjoys the sense of importance this provides, and the Iranians benefited
from using a Western figure to reinforce their views. Middle Eastern issues, more
specifically anti-Zionism, have indeed taken an increasingly prominent place in

69 Adelaide Advertiser, 16 Nov. 1999.

70 The Green March, Feb.–Mar. 1986.
71 Bulletin, 25 Apr. 1989.
72 Weekend Australian, 24 Oct. 1998.
73 Australian Jewish News, 10 Dec. 1999.
74 Australian Jewish News, 4 May 2001.
75 Tehran Times, 8 Dec. 1999.
76 Adelaide Institute, No. 106, Apr.2000 and No. 107, April 2000.
172 Danny Ben-Moshe

Toben’s activities. After the Australian High Court ordered him to remove denial
material from his Internet site, it has been largely dedicated to the Palestinian
cause, which provides a basis for indirect denial.
In August 2003 Toben and his Adelaide Institute colleague Mohammed
Hegazi attended a conference in Iran on the Palestinian Intifada at which Toben
was one of the speakers. The Adelaide Institute website included photos of Toben
wearing a black and white keffiyah, next to women in traditional Islamic dress
as he described how they questioned the Holocaust. In other photos Toben and
Hegazi appeared next to two Palestinians who had witnessed the “Zionist ‘Holo-
caust’” of the people of Palestine. At Tehran University they stood in front of a
recreated Palestinian home demolished by the Israeli army. The caption read: “A
demolished home symbolizes the actual ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from
their own homes: millions of Germans suffered this fate at the end of World War
Two, carried out by the same Axis of Evil that supports aggression against and
oppresses the Palestinians.”
Australian collaboration with Middle Eastern regimes and organizations over
Holocaust denial is consistent with trends internationally. Ties to those involved
in Middle Eastern denial have the potential to introduce more extreme forms of
antisemitism into Australia. It is no accident that several deniers, such as Jürgen
Graf, have made Iran their home and Toben has suggested that he may follow
their lead.⁷⁷ He said in relation to Federal Court action arising from the Human
Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission finding against him, that he “would
apply for political refugee status in Iran if and when his condition of stay in Aus-
tralia becomes insecure.”⁷⁸ In the interim, Toben remains active in the broad
Middle Eastern anti-Zionist crusade, boasting that he traveled to Jordan during
the 2003 war in Iraq in an attempt to offer himself as a human shield. In August
2003, he declared: “The tragedy in Iraq deflects from the Palestinian tragedy, and
peace will only come to the Middle East with the dismantling of the Zionist, apart-
heid, racist state of Israel.”⁷⁹
The increasing prevalence of Holocaust denial in the Muslim world has the
potential to increase support for Holocaust denial in Australia from within the
Islamic and Arabic communities, as has already occurred in Europe and North

77 Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman, “The Fight Against Holocaust Denial,” Midstream
(April 2001).
78 Australian Jewish News, 18 May 2001.
79 ADC Online 5, no. 2 (Aug. 2003).
 Holocaust Denial in Australia 173

America. Incidents of this nature have happened in Australia in the past.⁸⁰ This
could lead to alliances between Islamic extremists and the traditional far Right, a
practice which is evident in Europe and North America. In addition, with denial
often related to extreme forms of antisemitism in the Middle East, these ties may
increase the radical character of denial amongst groups such as the League,
ACLU, and the Adelaide Institute in Australia. Moreover, as Islam in South East
Asia is influenced by the extremist Islamic groups from the Middle East there
may be a growth of denial in Asia in which Australian deniers could play a role.
Indeed on his way to Iran for the conference on the Intifada in August 2003, Toben
stopped in Malaysia where he gave a lecture to the history class of Professor A. B.
Kopanski at the International Islamic University in Malaysia.⁸¹
Holocaust denial is also likely to appear in the Australian Islamic/Arabic
community in relation to attacks against Israel. For example, in October 2000 as
the Al-Aqsa “Intifada” erupted, the Australian Muslim News published on its front
page a statement from the president of the Supreme Islamic Council of New South
Wales, Gabr Elgafi, which stated that the Council

deplores the Israeli Government and its army for the atrocity and the barbaric behaviour in
the State of Palestine. We the Muslims of New South Wales urge the Australian Government
and the Prime Minister to demonstrate their disgust and disapproval of the events in Pal-
estine and the Israeli territories. We find ironical that the victims of the so called holocaust
have had a lapse of memory.⁸²

The Middle Eastern dimension adds another potential source of support for
deniers from the hard Left where anti-Zionism plays a central role. Anti-Zionism,
particularly amongst elites, has been identified as a new form of antisemitism
with implications for Holocaust denial.⁸³ Evidence of the Israeli-Nazi equivalence
in left-wing circles has been widely seen since the outbreak of Israel-Palestinian
fighting in September 2000. In 2003, as controversy raged about Israel’s security
fence, the Sydney Morning Herald broadsheet published a cartoon which equated
the West Bank with the Warsaw Ghetto, through two walls.⁸⁴ Hatred for Israel on

80 Jeremy Jones, “Holocaust Revisionism in Australia,” Without Prejudice vol. 4, (Dec. 1991):
53.
81 www.adelaideinstitute.org accessed 17 Aug. 2003.
82 Australian Muslim News (Oct. 2000): 1.
83 Paul Iganski and Barry Kosmin, eds., A New AntiSemitism? Debating Judeophobia in
21st-Century Britain (London: Institute for Jewish Policy Research, 2003); see also Robert S.
Wistrich, “Cruel Britannia: Anti-Semitism among the Ruling Elites,” Azure, no. 21 (Summer
2005), 100–24.
84 See editorial, Australian Jewish News, 22 Aug. 2003.
174 Danny Ben-Moshe

the Left, which involves breaking down the taboo of the Holocaust, could thus
fuel Holocaust relativism and lead to direct collaboration between anti-Zionists
and Holocaust deniers as has occurred in Europe. Indeed, in 2003 the left-wing
Melbourne Underground Film Festival in Australia offered screenings on the
Israeli occupation from “a Palestinian perspective” together with the screening of
films by Irving and Faurisson. This was a clear sign of the developing relationship
between Holocaust relativism, denial, and left-wing anti-Zionism.

David Irving

Any discussion about Holocaust denial in Australia would be incomplete without

considering the British historian David Irving. While obviously not an Australian
denier, he has done more than anyone else to make Holocaust denial an issue
of public debate in Australia. Australian denial organizations were centrally
involved in this process, with Irving acting as a vehicle to promote their agenda.
Irving first visited Australia in March 1986 on a national tour organized by the
League publishing arm, Veritas, to promote his book Uprising. League leader
Butler and Irving appeared to have a close relationship, with Butler hosting him
in his home during this visit.⁸⁵ Overseas, Butler also chaired meetings for Irving,
such as that held in Winnipeg in 1987.⁸⁶ Because of his relatively high profile,
Irving attracted extensive and mostly uncritical media interest during his visit,
far more than the local deniers could generate for themselves.
After Irving failed to find a British publisher for Churchill’s War, Veritas pub-
lished the book and organized a 1987 tour of Australia for Irving to promote it.
The Australian Jewish community became increasingly concerned at the higher
profile Irving was giving to Holocaust denial and as reports emerged in 1992 that
he would be visiting again, the Jewish community began to lobby for him to
be denied an entry visa.⁸⁷ In 1993 Irving received a letter from the Government
informing him that he was being denied a visa based on concern that “the effect
your presence in Australia will have within the community” and “that your pro-
posed visit…would have been disruptive to the Australian community.”⁸⁸ Thus

85 The Bulletin, 13 May 86.

86 On Target, 30 Nov. 1990.
87 The Age, 2 Dec. 1992.
88 The Australian, 19 Feb. 1993.
 Holocaust Denial in Australia 175

began a cycle of repeated visa applications which enveloped the sick cause of
Holocaust denial in the false halo of free speech.
While denied personal entry, in 1993 Irving produced a video especially
designed for an Australian audience, “The Search for Truth in History,” with the
local deniers responsible for its promotion. Newspaper advertisements promot-
ing the video listed Muriden and the ACLU’s contact details, and in a program
organized by Veritas and Bennett, the video was scheduled to be shown nation-
ally but most talks were cancelled because of protests.⁸⁹ However, this whole
process made denial an almost daily news item, fed by interviews with Irving
from the UK and America.
Irving received some practical benefit from this Australian support during
his 2001 libel trial in London.⁹⁰ 288 donations were received from Australia
alone, ranging from $10–$2000, in the period leading up to his trial.⁹¹ Irving was
assisted in preparing information for his cross-examination by Australian public
servant Michael Mills. This demonstrates that an Australian such as Mills who
has no impact on the debate about the Holocaust in Australia, can play a more
significant role when connected to prominent overseas deniers.⁹² Following the
court’s decision against Irving, the ACLU sought to provide financial assistance
for his appeal.⁹³
The Internet has undoubtedly broadened the reach of all deniers and is the
primary means through which non-Australian deniers can reach an Australian
audience. Irving’s Internet site, for example, provides a section for purchases
with Australian credit cards.⁹⁴ While the Internet does not offer the range of
coverage of mainstream media, it has been the means by which Irving interacts
with Australians in a mutually beneficial and close relationship.⁹⁵ The ACLU and
League promote his books, which are available at their meetings,⁹⁶ while Toben
lauds Irving as “one of the few historians to have their moral and intellectual
integrity intact.” Irving returned the favor by issuing a statement in support of
Toben during his own legal difficulties in Australia.⁹⁷

89 The Age, 19 June 1993.

90 The Age, 20 May 1993.
91 The Weekend Australian, 15–16 Apr. 2000.
92 Generation, May 2000.
93 According to columnist Jill Singer, Herald Sun, 14 Apr. 2000.
94 http://www.fpp.co.uk/orderforms/orderformAustral.html accessed 17 July 2002.
95 See, for example http://www.fpp.co.uk/Letters/Rightwing/Knight241101.html accessed 3
July 2002.
96 ACLU newsletter, no. 110 (April 1996).
97 Sydney Morning Herald, 10 Apr. 1999.
176 Danny Ben-Moshe

By lending his name to the Australian deniers, Irving has been able to assist
their campaign and they have remained committed to him despite the London
court’s decision unequivocally branding him as a racist, antisemite, and Holo-
caust denier.

The Far Right

Holocaust deniers are sufficiently connected to the broader far Right that they
can use these links effectively to advance their cause. It is far Right tolerance of
Holocaust denial that provides the deniers with a base to increase their support.
For example, the militia magazine Lock Stock and Barrel does not directly espouse
negationist theses, but it does carry advertisements from Olga Scully.⁹⁸ More-
over, Holocaust denial is a crucial part of the white supremacist agenda, openly
espoused by Australian neo-Nazi skinheads and New Age racists obsessed with
UFOs, lost civilizations, and alternative health. It has long been embraced by mil-
itant Christian Identity ministries who have distributed the Leuchter Report and
Ernst Zündel’s tapes. It also creeps into the agitation of the racist Right opposed
to Asian immigration and multiculturalism.
Denial clearly generates antisemitism, so protecting freedom of speech
must be balanced with protecting the Holocaust denier’s Jewish targets. Despite
the centrality of freedom of speech, there are legal limitations on hate speech
to which the Jewish community has recourse, primarily the 1995 Racial Hatred
Act. This prohibits racially offensive or abusive behavior, covering public acts
“reasonably likely in all the circumstances to offend, insult, humiliate or intim-
idate that person or group.” The Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ)
took action against both Toben and Scully under the act with the Human Rights
and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC). In 2001, HREOC ordered Toben
to remove material from his Internet site which breached the act by denigrating
Jews, and to apologize to ECAJ,⁹⁹ while Scully was similarly ordered to apologize
for her literature.
However, for Toben and Scully the process reinforced their world view, with
both stating they would ignore the findings. Toben responded to the pending case
by switching to an overseas Internet Service Provider, but in a 2002 landmark
ruling, the Federal Court found the 1995 Racial Hatred Act applied to the Internet

98 The Age, 3 Nov. 1998.

99 The Age, 8 July 2003.
 Holocaust Denial in Australia 177

and ordered Toben to remove material from his Internet site. The Federal Court
ruled that he would be in contempt of court if he refused to do so, making him
accountable under Australian law even if the material is hosted in another juris-
diction. This was an important precedent in relation to online racism in Austra-
lia and may also influence similar deliberations by courts overseas. The Federal
Court decision against Toben, which was upheld following an appeal, was also
of particular importance because it found that Holocaust denial breached the
Racial Hatred Act objectively, rather than being subjective to the feelings of the
complainant. Scully was also found to breach the act with the risk that if she
continued to distribute her material she would be in contempt of court. Toben
removed offending material and the threat remains of being held in contempt
of court should he add denial material to his Internet site. Ultimately, if Toben
moved overseas it would be hard to enforce any decision handed down by an Aus-
tralian court but his legal liability would probably prevent his return to Australia.
Despite the important precedent of the High Court decision against Toben,
the ability of the judiciary to identify the antisemitic nature of denial remains a
moot point. When, for example, the Jewish Community Council of Victoria sought
an interim injunction to prevent the screening of Irving’s film at the Melbourne
Underground Film Festival, the judge said it may be offensive to some members
of the Jewish community but it did not constitute racial vilification under the Vic-
torian Racial and Religious Tolerance Act. He found the film to be “quite bland”
despite references such “traditional enemies” and “dining out on the Holocaust.”
Reflecting the importance of freedom of speech in Australia, the judge said he
made the ruling to uphold the right of the Victorian population to engage in
robust discussion. Legal responses to Internet regulation may well prove pivotal
in the future of Holocaust denial in Australia and indeed internationally.
In terms of Holocaust denial on the Internet, the work of Australian deniers
will also be affected by the situation overseas. In his German trial, for instance,
Toben was acquitted of charges of defaming the memory of the dead on the Inter-
net because the offending information was installed outside the German jurisdic-
tion. However, an appeal to the German Supreme Court found he might be tried
as the material could be downloaded in Germany. This has global implications
for Internet regulation, but its practical effect means that Toben is unlikely to
return to Germany. This indicates that the future prospects of Holocaust denial in
Australia will be directly affected by global responses to it.
Denial in Australia will also be effected by developments in the negationist
movement overseas. For example, the reduced funding that the California-based
IHR enjoys, as compared to the past will asffect its activities in Australia and the
support it can offer figures such as Toben. In terms of responding to Holocaust
denial, the Jewish community runs extensive Holocaust educational programs
178 Danny Ben-Moshe

while in both government and private high schools, Holocaust literature such as
the Diary of Anne Frank is widely read. However, educational authorities, both
Jewish and general, will need to consider as part of these efforts the develop-
ment of specific educational programs aimed at addressing the issue of Holocaust
denial. This will be increasingly important as survivors of the Holocaust, who
speak to thousands of schoolchildren each year, pass away.
An indication of the potential for Holocaust denial was provided well
over a decade ago by the best-selling and award- winning 1994 book by Helen
Demidenko, The Hand That Signed the Paper. This case demonstrated that some
of Australia’s leading literary figures and intellectuals were willing to embrace
a book whose central thesis, while not denying the Holocaust, found a defence
for it. The book presented “Jewish-Bolshevik” persecution of Ukranians in the
1930s as a parallel to the Holocaust and a kind of “justification” for it. All three
Holocaust denying organizations enthusiastically embraced the novel. Although
The Hand That Signed the Paper is a work of fiction and as such is distinct from
overt denial, this experience suggests that a time may arise when literary figures
will similarly defend a work of Holocaust denial. Indeed, in February 2000, the
Victorian Minister for the Arts, Mary Delahunty, in a hypothetical discussion said
she would hope to “have the courage” to put public money into a play based on
the work of David Irving.¹⁰⁰
It is easy to dismiss Holocaust deniers as extremists. But with the passage
of time, the advantages of the Internet and international support, the potential
exists for them to establish an “alternative history.” Acceptance of denial’s core
thesis is by no means limited to the racist fringe. The Chief Historical Examiners
for the High School certificate in one state and a school history teacher in another
have reportedly said, when referring to revisionism, that there is an alternative
point of view. A danger lies in the appeal of relativism to some Western liberals
as was seen in responses to Norman Finkelstein’s book, The Holocaust Industry.
While hard core deniers remain small in number, scores are known to attend their
meetings, hundreds are sympathizers, and they reach thousands through their
mailing lists.
Denial of the Shoah can and does lead to overt antisemitism. It can also put
Holocaust survivors, of which Australia has the highest per capita number any-
where outside of Israel, on the defensive. This is what Nadine Fresco, a French

100 Arts Today, ABC Radio National, 16 Feb. 2000. When criticized for this, she said Holocaust
revisionism was outside the boundaries of what is acceptable and therefore would not be
publicly supported. Mary Delahunty to B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission, Inc., 21 Feb.
2000.
 Holocaust Denial in Australia 179

authority on Holocaust denial, describes as the “double liquidation,” denying not

only the dead but also the living.¹⁰¹

101 Nadine Fresco, in Holocaust Remembrance: The Shapes of Memory, edited by Geoffrey
Hartman (Oxford, 1994), 191.
Rotem Kowner
The Strange Case of Japanese “Revisionism”
Japan occupies a special place in the research concerning attitudes toward the
Jews in modern times. Japanese antisemitism has not evolved from an encoun-
ter with Jews, and it lacks deep historical roots or religious origins. It has never
gained wholehearted governmental support or become a national ideology;
neither has it developed because of any significant conflict between modern-day
Israel and Japan. Moreover, antisemitism has never penetrated the lower classes
or attracted popular support. Manifesting itself almost exclusively in written
form, it has never been exacerbated to the point of material or physical assaults
upon Jews living in Japan.
Nevertheless, after 1918, the encounter of the Japanese with the Protocols
of the Elders of Zion heralded the emergence of antisemitic views in the country
along with a growing public interest in the role of Jews in world politics and the
economy. The Protocols were not only a catalyst, but also a mirror of negative
Japanese attitudes to Jews in general. When anti-Jewish views were rife, interest
in the Protocols grew, and when Japanese antisemitism languished, so did inter-
est in the book. This fluctuation was often a reflection of Japanese xenophobic
nationalism in general, and its bizarre antisemitic attitudes in particular, and
should be treated as such.¹
At the end of World War I, Japan was burdened by social discontent, and
its elite was apprehensive of the spread of Communist ideas into the working
masses. The encounter with a foreign book that offered not only a partial account
for the world turmoil, but also a colorful warning seemed effective and the book
was soon embraced. Some of the Japanese who welcomed the book, however,
were also admirers of Jews, partly because they exaggerated Jewish power. From
their local perspective, they had a good reason to view the Protocols as confirm-
ing their positive preconceptions, and this duality has remained an unmistable
characteristic of Japanese attitudes to this very day.
Two decades earlier, during the Russo-Japanese War, these future philosem-
ites and antisemites received an unequivocal demonstration of Jewish “power,”
when a single banker, Jacob H. Schiff of the New York bank, Loeb, Kuhn and

1 On the Protocols, see “Symposium: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Aum, and
Antisemitism in Japan (David Goodman); The Protocols in a Land without Jews: A
Reconsideration (Rotem Kowner); Comments (Ben-Ami Shillony),” Antisemitism International,
nos. 3–4 (2006): 55–79. This journal, published by the Vidal Sassoon International Center for
the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is edited by Robert Wistrich.
182 Rotem Kowner

Company, obtained for Japan about half of its desperately needed foreign loans.
Half a year after the conclusion of the war, when Schiff arrived to Japan to receive
the Order of the Rising Sun from Emperor Meiji, virtually all the political, mili-
tary, and business elite took part in the banquets given in his honor. Thereafter,
Schiff’s meddling in world politics, at least in Japanese eyes, did not cease. Even
as late as during World War I, he refused to allow his firm to participate in any
Russian war financing.
It is important to note that the Protocols were not unanimously accepted
in Japan at face value. While some were quick to translate it, others were even
quicker to refute it. However, the interest in the Protocols generated in Japan fol-
lowing their publication in Western languages led to their full translation in 1924
by an army officer named Yasue Norihiro [Senkô] (1888–1950) under the pseud-
onym Hô Kôshi. This prompted the Army General Staff three years later to dis-
patch Yasue, who was on a study tour in Germany, to Palestine to further examine
the Jewish situation there.²
Although antisemitic ideas began to take root in Japan during the 1920s,
only during the following decade was there a substantial increase in antisemitic
publications in Japan. They represented a conservative reaction to liberalism
and socialism by ultranationalist scholars and military figures, and served as
an explanation for the growing conflict with the United States and Great Britain.
While reflecting much of the Japanese approach to the external world at that time,
these publications were merely a feeble echo of the identity crisis Japan expe-
rienced during its cataclysmic turn against the West. It was the rise of fascism
which contributed to the greater interest in antisemitic writings in the 1930s. Like
Yasue before him, the writings of Navy Captain Inuzuka Koreshige, who was in
charge of the Jewish refugees in Shanghai from 1939 to 1942, are a vivid example
of the duality of Japanese attitudes.³
While heavily relying on the Protocols, Inuzuka held Jews in awe and offered
to create for them an Asian homeland, and expected to benefit from their influ-
ence and power. Believing that Jews controlled the finance, politics, and media in
the United States and Great Britain, Inuzuka and Yasue, by then colonel and the
liaison with the Jewish Far East Council from 1938 to 1940, formulated the Japa-

2 On Yasue’s visit to Palestine, see David Kranzler, Japanese, Nazis, and Jews: The Jewish
Refugee Community in Shanghai, 1938-1945 (New York, 1976), 207.
3 On Yasue’s ambivalence to Judaism and his appreciation of the Zionist effort, alongside
fears of Jewish power, see Yasue Norihiro, Kakumei Undô o Abaku—Yudaya no Chi o Fumite
(Unmasking a revolutionary movement: Setting foot on Jewish land) (Tokyo, 1931), 1.
 The Strange Case of Japanese “Revisionism” 183

nese policy permitting the entry of Jewish refugees from Germany into Shanghai.⁴
While it is true that German influence on Japan was weakened by the racial fric-
tion and limited military cooperation between the two nations, one can argue
that the Protocols had a certain positive effect on Japanese decision makers in
China and Manchuria, since it made them believe that Jewish power might be
instrumental for their empire. In this sense, Japanese promulgators of the Pro-
tocols markedly differed from European antisemites who never interpreted the
book in any positive, or at least constructive, light.⁵
Ironically, by 1940 both Inuzuka and Yasue were regarded by German offi-
cials as “friends of the Jews.”⁶ More important, however, is the fact that Japan,
despite signing the Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany in 1936 and the Tripar-
tite Pact with Germany and Italy in 1940, never joined the two in deporting Jews,
using them as a labor force, or facilitating their extermination. German pres-
sure notwithstanding, Japan’s overall benevolent policy toward Jews (although
marred occasionally by harsh treatment) during World War II, demonstrates the
limited detrimental, if not ambivalent, effect the Protocols exerted in Japan in the
first two decades after its publication.
The decline of Japanese interest in the Protocols after 1945 is no less reveal-
ing. Except for one minor reference to it, in the twenty-six years that followed
Japan’s surrender no author dealt with the book, nor was it republished.⁷ Japa-
nese society was occupied by fundamental needs such as rebuilding its cities and
industrial infrastructure and restoring its economy. It was less troubled by iden-
tity issues. For this reason the interest in Jews—always a marginal topic in the Jap-
anese society—totally subsided. In 1970, however, a book by Yamamoto Shichihei
(using the seemingly more authoritative pseudonym Isaiah Ben-Dasan), Nihonjin
to Yudayajin (The Japanese and the Jews), heralded a new era of growing inter-
national aspirations and a return to global competition.⁸ Two years earlier, the

4 See Pamela Rotner Sakamoto, Japanese Diplomats and Jewish Refugees: A World War II
Dilemma (Westport, Conn., 1998), 27–28.
5 On Inuzuka’s plans, see Marvin Tokayer and Mary Swartz. The Fugu Plan: The Untold Story of
the Japanese and the Jews During World War II (New York, 1979).
6 It is unclear whether the motive was his age or views, but within a short time, the Army
released Yasue from active service. See Krebs, The “Jewish problem,” 117; Françoise Kreissler,
“Japans Judenpolitik (1931–1945),” in Formierung und Fall der Achse Berlin-Tokyo, ed. by
Gerhard Krebs and Bernd Martin (Munich, 1984): 187–210, 203–4.
7 In 1958 Matsumoto Fumi reprinted Kubota Eikichi’s translation of the Protocols from 1938;
see Matsumoto Fumi, Fuji Kaidan’in Konryû (Building the altar at Mount Fuji) (Tokyo, 1958).
8 Isaiah Ben-Dasan [Yamamoto Shichihei], Nihonjin to Yudayajin (The Japanese and the Jews)
(Tokyo, 1970).
184 Rotem Kowner

Japanese economy had surpassed that of Germany, becoming the second largest
economy in the capitalist world. The Japanese quest for recognition following the
success of the Tokyo Olympic games of 1964 and the World Exposition in Osaka in
1970 was accompanied by a renewed search for self-definition.
Shichihei’s book offered just that, although it was basically about Japan
rather than Jews. For this reason, but also for the writing style and the timing, it
became a sensational success and sold more than three million copies. Less than
a year passed before Nagafuchi Ichirô authored his own version of the Protocols.⁹
In the mid-1980s Japan witnessed a second surge of antisemitic writings, which
included many references to the Protocols, or at least notions of a Jewish ambition
to gain control of the world. It is not surprising that this reemergence of the Proto-
cols occurred when it was predicted that the Japanese economy would supercede
that of the United States, and the Japanese were facing a second identity crisis.
Like the situation half a century earlier, this time, too, there was increasing fric-
tion with the United States, reinforced by rising nationalism in Japan.
There have been various views on the actual significance of Japanese antise-
mitic writings and their impact on Japanese society. They range from alarmist
fears to ironic deflation of the phenomenon. Some experts argue that Japanese
antisemitism leads to anti-Jewish hatred and anti-Israel views, while others
suggest that it is a marginal phenomenon that may even reinforce positive images
of a successful group, thereby providing Jews and the state of Israel with some
credit they do not necessarily deserve.
The exposure to antisemitic literature has not led to a substantial shift in
perceptions of the Jews, but it tends to slightly underscore its positive and nega-
tive facets. In some cases and for some individuals it may lead to suspicion and
distrust, while for others, as Prof. Ben-Ami Shillony of the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem has pointed out, it may lead to greater respect and admiration. The
majority of Japanese are ignorant of the Protocols and unaware of the long legacy
of antisemitism in the world and its offshoots in Japan.¹⁰ This negative implica-
tion notwithstanding, antisemitism has not led to any cases of physical violence
against Jews for being Jews.
The Protocols in Japan do, however, combine both a long-term demonization
of Jews (of more than 80 years), with an occult image of a sinister group that
clandestinely gathers and plans to rule the world. It is really not important, if the

9 Nagafuchi Ichirô, Yudayajin to Sekai Kakumei: Shion no Giteisho (The Jews and the world
revolution: the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (Tokyo, 1971).
10 Rotem Kowner, On Ignorance, Respect, and Suspicion: Current Japanese Attitudes Towards
Jews, ACTA no. 11 (Jerusalem: SICSA, 1997).
 The Strange Case of Japanese “Revisionism” 185

book is genuine. The belief in the power of the Jews is much stronger than any
rational refutation and serves far more important goals than its authors could
dream about.
Since the antisemitic surge of the late 1980s, Jewish organizations have made
several attempts to halt the publication and distribution of the Protocols. Their
most fruitful activities took place during the Marco Polo Affair, which ultimately
led to the appearance of many articles about Jews and the Holocaust, mostly pos-
itive and some even self-reflective.¹¹ This certainly was a breakthrough in the Jap-
anese intellectual treatment of this issue in the last twenty years.¹²
It should be emphasized in this context that antisemitic authors in Japan ini-
tially ignored the Holocaust, in line with a longstanding lack of popular awareness
regarding the subject. Although Anne Frank’s Diary of a Young Girl, published in
Japanese in 1952, had been a bestseller, most readers regarded the book as an
account of a universal war victim and remained oblivious to the Jewish identity of
its heroine. More informed interest in the Holocaust began to be expressed only
during the Eichmann trial a decade later, which was covered by several Japanese
journalists.
When Holocaust denial attracted widespread attention in the West in the
course of the 1980s, it was only a matter of time until Japanese antisemitic writers
followed suit. Uno Masami, a Christian pastor who in 1986 had published two
antisemitic books in Japan which together sold over a million copies, led the
field.¹³ In 1989, he became the first Japanese to publicly deny the Holocaust, as
well as establishing strong ties with various Holocaust-denial organizations. In
books and lectures, he denounced the “lies” in Anne Frank’s diary and argued
that the Holocaust was “Jewish propaganda.” ¹⁴ In the wake of Uno’s publica-
tions, an increasing number of Japanese began to show interest in Holocaust
denial. In 1992, for example, Keiichiro Kobori, a professor at the University of

11 See Goodman and Miyazawa, Jews in the Japanese Mind: The History and Uses of a Cultural
Stereotype 2nd ed. (Lexington Mass., 2000), 271–76; Rotem Kowner, “Tokyo Recognizes
Auschwitz: The Rise and Fall of Holocaust Denial in Japan, 1989–1999,” Journal of Genocide
Research 3 (2001): 257–72; Herbert Worm, “Holocaust-Leugner in Japan: Der Fall ‘Marco Polo’—
Printmedien und Vergangenheitsbewältignug,” in Japan 1994/95: Politics und Wirtschaft, ed. by
Manfred Pohl (Hamburg, 1995): 114–61.
12 For some suggestions for practical measures, see Kowner, Tokyo Recognizes Auschwitz,
269–70.
13 On the Japanese perception of the Holocaust and Holocaust denial, see n. 11, and Rotem
Kowner, “The Rise and Fall of Holocaust Denial in Japan, 1989–1999” (2001).
14 See, for instance, Uno Masami, Miezaru teikoku: 1993, shionisto, yudaya ga seikai o shihai
suru [The invisible empire: the Zionist Jews will control the world in 1993] (Tokyo, 1989).
186 Rotem Kowner

Tokyo, praised the work of the California-based Institute for Historical Review
(IHR), one of the leading Holocaust-denial organizations, in an article published
in the prestigious daily Sankei Shimbun. The IHR, for its part, has invited Japa-
nese speakers to its annual convention, and several Japanese “revisionists” have
submitted articles to its newsletter.¹⁵
This “revisionism” cannot be divorced from the role that Jews occupy in the
minds of the Japanese. The most common view is that Jews serve as a reflection
of the Other, representing or displacing the preoccupation with external ele-
ments (the West, foreigners in Japan) about which the Japanese feel conflicted,
but which are less “legitimate” targets of criticism. Jews are also used to facil-
itate internal needs: they serve as a beacon of Japan’s quest for self-definition,
namely as reinforcement of a sense of uniqueness, as well as an explanation for
Japan’s problems (e.g., economic distress and international criticism), and as a
warning for future developments. In addition, the Japanese have a fascination for
works dealing with the occult, supernatural phenomena, and conspiracies. The
Jews are already perceived as an unfamiliar and legendary people; some authors,
responding to market demand, also portray them as manipulators of the world’s
political and economic system.¹⁶
Based on three surveys that I conducted among more than 600 students
during 1995–1996, I contend that Jews, in their virtual nonexistence in Japan,
often play the role of demonic conspirators.¹⁷ Rationally, the majority of Japa-
nese do not accept such a notion. Yet many Japanese—including businessmen,
politicians, and members of the more educated echelon—turn to antisemitic liter-
ature for the comforting rationales to be found there. It is surely more appealing
to blame Japan’s economic or political “misfortunes” on some outside demonic
force rather than submitting to a sober appraisal of the country’s past and future
path.
Given the recent wave of antisemitic literature, one may wonder whether it
is possible to alter the Japanese mindset toward Jews. In fact, the unique char-
acteristics of Japanese antisemitism may make the problem easier to deal with.
In the case study presented below, the “Marco Polo affair,” it will be shown how
publication of an article promoting Holocaust denial led to a fully orchestrated

15 On the ties of the Institute for Historical Review and Japan, see Kenneth S. Stern, Holocaust
Denial (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1994), 49.
16 For further discussion, see Kowner, On Ignorance, Respect, and Suspicion; Jennifer Golub,
Japanese Attitudes toward Jews (Pacific Rim Institute of the American Jewish Committee, 1992).
17 See Kowner, On Ignorance, Respect, and Suspicion.
 The Strange Case of Japanese “Revisionism” 187

operation against the spread of antisemitism in a manner that may have changed
the course of current attitudes toward Jews in Japan.
To understand the context of this affair, it is important to remember that the
year 1995 was an annus horribilis for the Japanese. On 17 January, the city of Kobe
was shaken by a great earthquake that left more than six thousand people dead.
Two months later, millions of underground commuters in Tokyo were subjected
to a series of nerve gas attacks that killed twelve and injured some five thousand.
On the economic front, 1995 marked the end of a spectacular rise that had lasted
several decades. After the yen-dollar rate reached an all-time high in April, with
Japan’s GNP amounting to more than 80 percent of that of the United States, the
economy took a sharp downturn, entering into a painful recession.
It is against this backdrop that the first widely publicized case of Holocaust
denial in Japan took place. The affair began on 14 January 1995 with a ten-page
article published in the monthly Marco Polo. Owned by the prestigious publish-
ing house Bungei Shunju, Marco Polo had a circulation of about 200,000 and
was aimed at young, affluent, and educated Japanese men. The offending article,
entitled, “The Greatest Taboo in Postwar History: There Were No Nazi Gas Cham-
bers” was a classic piece of Holocaust denial. According to its author, a neurolo-
gist named Nishioka Masanori, there was scant evidence to show that Jews were
systematically killed in gas chambers. The Final Solution, he claimed, was merely
a plan to resettle Jews in the East, as Hitler never desired the annihilation of the
Jews. In all, the article concluded, the “Holocaust” was nothing more than Allied
propaganda.¹⁸
Over a period of several years, Nishioka had submitted his article to more
than sixty Japanese journals. “The Greatest Taboo” was finally accepted by Marco
Polo in June 1994. However, the magazine’s editor, Hanada Kazuyoshi, decided to
withhold publication until January 1995 in order to coincide with the 50th anni-
versary of the liberation of Auschwitz.¹⁹ It was there, he wrote in his introduction
to the article, that “the greatest taboo of postwar history is being kept secret....
Why is it that Japan’s media do not write on this matter?” ²⁰

18 Nishioka Masanori, “Sengo sekaishi saidai no tabu: Nachi gasu shitsu wa nakkata” [The
greatest taboo of postwar history: there were no Nazi gas chambers], Marco Polo (February
1995): 170–79.
19 See Iwakami Yasumi, “Mujaki na Holocaust revisionist” [An artless Holocaust revisionist],
Takarajima 30 (April 1995): 18–27. Before coming to Marco Polo, Hanada served as editor of the
weekly Shûkan Bunshun, which in 1993 published a large advertisement for a three-volume,
virulently antisemitic work.
20 Introduction by Hanada to Nishioka, “Nachi gasu shitsu wa nakkata,” 171.
188 Rotem Kowner

Echoes and Responses

Responses to the article published in Marco Polo can be divided into three stages.
In the first stage, the Japanese media ignored the article, in part because most
of the public attention was focused on the horrendous aftermath of the earth-
quake in Kobe. Thus it came about that the article was “discovered” by foreigners,
namely, members of the Committee Against Antisemitism in Japan, a watchdog
group established in August 1994 by Jewish residents of the country.²¹ The com-
mittee first decided to inform several Jewish organizations and embassies about
the content of the article. Then, once coverage of the earthquake had subsided, it
issued its own public statement.
Three entities responded quickly to the committee’s alert. Abraham Foxman,
national director of the Anti-Defamation League in the United States, wrote to the
editor of Marco Polo and demanded a retraction in the next issue of the magazine.
Simultaneously, the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center dispatched a
protest to the Japanese ambassador to the United States and sent Rabbi Abraham
Cooper, an associate dean of the Center and a veteran opponent of Japanese
antisemitism, to Japan. A day later, the Israeli embassy sent its press attaché to
Marco Polo’s editorial office to protest the publication and demand an apology.
The assistant editor who met with the attaché expressed no apology; he did,
however, offer to provide space in the next issue for a rebuttal of the article’s
accusations.²²
The second stage focused on the threat of a boycott against the journal and its
publisher. After Bungei Shunju refused to retract or apologize for the article, Rabbi
Cooper decided to contact eight companies whose advertisements had appeared
in the latest issue of Marco Polo. Volkswagen was the first to respond, announc-
ing that it would cease advertising in the magazine. Two days later, Mitsubishi
Motors and Mitsubishi Electric followed suit, while Cartier Japan took the more
radical step of suspending its advertising in all Bungei Shunju publications.²³
The final stage involved local and foreign media pressure. Ten days after
Marco Polo hit the stands, the Associated Press reported on the Holocaust-denial
article, and by the next day, the Japanese media had picked up the item.²⁴ At first,

21 For a detailed account of the Committee against Antisemitism in Japan, see Nicolas Davis,
“The Marco Polo Affair” (unpubl. seminar paper).
22 See “Publisher Closes Marco Polo for Anti-Jewish Article,” Daily Yomiuri, 31 January 1995, 1;
“Japanese Criticized for Holocaust Denial,” Chicago Tribune, 25 January 1995.
23 See “Volkswagen Pulls Advert from Japanese Magazine,” Jewish Chronicle, 27 January 1995.
24 See, for example, “Jews Blast Article Denying Holocaust,” Asahi Evening News, 25 January
1995; “Nachi no gasu shitsu no hitei ni kōgi” [Protests about the denial of Nazi gas chambers],
 The Strange Case of Japanese “Revisionism” 189

Hanada continued to defend his decision to publish Nishioka’s article, arguing

that freedom of expression extended as well to the publication of nonconformist
views. Criticism of Hanada, however, mounted as more and more newspapers,
both domestic and foreign, reported on the affair. On January 27, Bungei Shunju
evinced its first signs of capitulation, instructing its agents in the United States to
notify Abraham Cooper that it was weighing the possibility of closing down the
magazine.
At this point, the course of events accelerated. On 30 January, Bungei Shunju
dismissed Hanada and announced that publication of Marco Polo had been per-
manently suspended. The dismissal announcement was accompanied by a letter
of apology written to Cooper by Tanaka Kengo, the president of Bungei Shunju, in
which the latter admitted to an overall lack of understanding regarding the Holo-
caust. Both the announcement and the apology received wide media coverage
both at home and abroad.²⁵
Even the Japanese government—which in general is reluctant to involve itself
in media affairs—felt obliged to denounce the article. But an even more dramatic
and arguably more successful outcome of the Jewish campaign against Marco
Polo was the sensation it sparked in the Japanese media. On February 2, three
days after his written apology, Tanaka met with Cooper at a joint press confer-
ence. In front of hundreds of representatives of the print and broadcast media,
Tanaka reiterated his apology and announced that closure of Marco Polo was the
best way to show Bungei Shunju’s deep regret over the incident.²⁶
Less than two weeks later, Tanaka was forced to step down as head of the
publishing company, citing the Marco Polo affair as one of the factors behind
his resignation.²⁷ Sources in the Japanese media later reported that the incident
was only the last in a series of scandals that had rocked Bungei Shunju (more-
over, they reported, both Tanaka and Hanada had been reassigned within the
company). They agreed, however, that publication of the Holocaust denial article

Asahi Shimbun, 26 January 1995.

25 See, for example, “Holocaust Denial Dooms Marco Polo,” Japan Times, 31 January 1995;
“Japanese Magazine Closes after Anti-Semitic Article,” International Herald Tribune, 1 February
1995.
26 See “Publisher Eases Jewish Groups’ Wrath by Closing Magazine over Holocaust Story,”
Nikkei Weekly, 6 February 1995.
27 See Kawado Kazufumi, “’Hanada ryū’ o dō sōkatsu suru no ka” [How can we summarize
‘Hanada’s manner’?], Asahi Shimbun, 24 February 1995.
190 Rotem Kowner

and, more importantly, the boycott it sparked had had a definite impact on the
decision to replace Tanaka.²⁸
In the following weeks, numerous articles and programs were devoted to
various aspects of the Marco Polo affair. While many articles focused on the back-
stage power struggle at Bungei Shunju and the company’s fall from grace, others
examined more fundamental aspects of the affair. A few writers challenged
the company’s hasty capitulation to foreign pressure, arguing that the Jewish
response to Marco Polo’s publication of “The Greatest Taboo” was indicative
of undue Jewish power and influence, which, if unchecked, would be a barrier
against legitimate critical discussion of the Holocaust. A majority, however,
avoided criticism of the Jewish campaign against the magazine. Several journals
even published sympathetic and informative articles on Jews and the Holocaust;
some journalists began to criticize Japanese ignorance of Jewish suffering, while
deploring the lack of professional judgment and sensationalist tendencies of their
own media.²⁹ The American scholar, David Goodman, went still further, contend-
ing that the “solipsistic monologue about Jews and antisemitism” in Japan was
typical of Japanese dealings with the outside world for centuries.³⁰
Holocaust denial is admittedly still a novel and limited phenomenon in Japa-
nese society. It seems to be promulgated only by a few individuals whose motives
are not always related to antisemitism; they may instead be demonstrating a
Japanese tendency to emulate foreign fashions or fads. Nonetheless, Holocaust
denial in Japan has a historical context.
My belief is that this phenomenon is associated with Japan’s lingering denial
of its own past, namely, its actions during the second Sino–Japanese War and
the Pacific front of World War II (1937–1945). A growing body of Japanese histo-
riography presents Japan as a victim rather than as an aggressor in these wars:
acceptance of such revisionist views becomes much easier when it is believed
that European modern history has been falsified as well.
Since the end of the 1980s, the Japanese public has been shocked by a stream
of testimonies regarding the disgraceful conduct of their country’s imperial army
and navy during the eight-year period of warfare. They have also become aware

28 See Shinoda Hiroyuki, “Bungei Shunju, Tanaka Kengo zen-shachô no yūutsu” [The
depression of Tanaka Kengo, former president of Bungei Shunju], Tsukuru (April 1995): 134–39;
see also David G. Goodman, “Anti-Semitism in Japan: Its History and Current Implications,”
in The Construction of Racial Identities in China and Japan, ed. Frank Dikötter (Honolulu:
University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 177–98, esp. 194.
29 See, for example, Sapio, 23 March 1995; Takarajima, 30 April 1995; Seiron (April 1995),
Brutus, 1 July 1995.
30 Goodman, “Anti-Semitism in Japan,” 195.
 The Strange Case of Japanese “Revisionism” 191

of the international attention and sharp criticism focused on Japan’s reaction to

these revelations. In the past, the Japanese had been somewhat insulated from
documentation of their country’s wartime role. Moreover, there was no clear con-
sensus regarding what had happened and why. Over time, however, victims of
that era began to speak out, and with the emergence of a new generation of Japa-
nese who had been born after 1945, there was increased willingness to publicize
wartime testimonies that were painful and sometimes appalling.
Although the most detailed accounts were published abroad, the Japanese
public gradually became familiar with the sequence of events regarding hideous
experiments in biological and chemical warfare that had been conducted by the
notorious Unit 731, which had resulted in the deaths of thousands of prisoners.
They learned of the “comfort women”—more than 100,000 non-Japanese women
who had been forced to serve Japanese troops as sex slaves.³¹ Most shocking,
however, were the revelations concerning the massacre carried out by Japanese
troops in Nanjing (Nanking). According to conservative sources, some 100,000–
200,000 Chinese civilians had been murdered and thousands of women raped
when Japanese troops occupied the Chinese capital in December 1937.³²
Unlike Germany, Japan has never publicly acknowledged full responsibility
for its wartime actions. Thus, whereas Germany constructs its defeat in 1945 as
a form of liberation, Japan still views it as a juncture of victimization.³³ Three
months before the Marco Polo affair, Ben Hills, the Tokyo correspondent of the
Australian daily, The Age, summarized the Japanese mindset regarding the war
as follows:

Imagine a country responsible for a war in which upwards of 20 million people were killed,
whose armies committed atrocities of the nature of Hitler’s “final solution”—and yet which

31 See Peter Williams and David Wallace, Unit 731: The Japanese Army’s Secret of
Secrets (London, 1989); George Hicks, The Comfort Women: Japan’s Brutal Regime of
Enforced Prostitution in the Second World War (New York, 1995); David Boling, Mass Rape,
Enforced Prostitution, and the Japanese Imperial Army: Japan Eschews International Legal
Responsibility? (Baltimore: Occasional Papers in Contemporary Asian Studies, 1995), 3 (128).
32 See Iguchi Kazuki, Kisaka Jun’ichiro, and Shimozato Masaki, Nanking jiken: Nanking shidan
kanei shiryoshu [Nanking incident: data collection of the Kyoto division] (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten,
1989); Hora Tomio, Fujihara Akira, and Honda Katsuichi, eds., Nanking daigyakusatsu no
Kenkyū [Research of the Nanking massacre] (Tokyo, 1992); Nanking daigyakusatsu no Shinsō
wo akiraka ni suru Zenkoku Renrakukai [The National Association for Revealing the Truth about
the Nanking Massacre], ed., Nanking daigyakusatsu: nihonjin heno hokuhatsu [The Nanking
massacre: accusation to the Japanese people] (Tokyo, 1992).
33 See Ian Buruma, The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan (New York,
1994).
192 Rotem Kowner

50 years on is still living in a fantasy world of denial and disbelief. Imagine a country where
Adolf Hitler never died, but lived on to a ripe old age, stripped of his absolute powers but
still worshipped by his people....³⁴

At the same time, since the 1990s, pleas for introspection and reconciliation with
the past have been heard more frequently in Japan.³⁵ For instance, in 1993, when
the 39-year rule of the Liberal Democratic party finally ended, the newly-elected
government of Hosokawa Morihiro indicated its willingness to reexamine some of
the long-concealed issues of the past. In his inaugural speech, Hosokawa spoke
of his “deep regret” concerning the “unbearable sufferings caused to so many
by Japan’s aggressive behavior and colonial control.” Soon thereafter, Hosokawa
chose South Korea as the site of his first overseas visit and issued there a “pro-
found apology” for Japanese acts of war.³⁶
Hosokawa’s approach, although it fell short of a full acknowledgement of
Japanese atrocities, made many uncomfortable. In 1994, Nagano Shigeto, the
minister of justice in a new government headed by Prime Minister Hata Tsutomu,
declared in a newspaper interview that the war waged by Japan should not be
viewed as a war of aggression, since it was essentially designed to free Asian
colonies of Western control. Tellingly, Nagano also contended that the Nanjing
massacre was a “fabrication” and that the comfort women were simply “military
prostitutes.” ³⁷ Although a public outcry across Asia led to Nagano’s resigna-
tion two days later, his statement expressed sentiments that were still held by a
large number of Japanese and were an indication of the way in which the Japan’s
leaders had largely refused to come to terms with their country’s recent past.³⁸
Japan—again, unlike Germany—has never passed legislation either to
remove immunity for war crimes or to ban the denial of its own or other coun-

34 Ben Hills, “Why Japan Must Face Its Past,” The Age, 4 October 1994, cited in Gavan
McCormack, The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence (Armonk, 1996), 230.
35 In this context, mention should be made of Japanese historian Ienaga Saburo, who waged
a long struggle against the Japanese Ministry of Education. See Irie Yoshimasa, “The History of
the Textbook Controversy,” Japan Echo 24, no. 3 (1997): 34–38.
36 McCormack, The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence, 226–27.
37 See “Nagano Retracts Remark about Nanjing ‘Hoax,’” Daily Yomiuri, 7 May 1994, 1;
Takahama Tatou, “Time to drop Tatemae and Speak the Truth,” Daily Yomiuri, 23 August 1994,
6.
38 A second minister to resign in similar circumstances was Sakurai Shin, the director-general
of the Environmental Agency, who declared that Japan had freed most of Asia from European
colonialism. See “Sakurai Resigns over War Remark,” Daily Yomiuri, 16 August 1994, 1;
“Cabinet Members’ Statements,” Aera, 12 September 1994, 36–38.
 The Strange Case of Japanese “Revisionism” 193

tries’ war crimes. In addition, it resisted offering across-the-board compensation

to the comfort women, ex-POWs, or others victimized by Japanese war crimes.
In this moral, political, and intellectual climate, it is not difficult to understand
the interest in Holocaust denial. For if the Holocaust can be relativized or even
denied, why not do the same for the Nanjing massacre—or, for that matter, any
other Japanese imperialistic activities from the first Sino-Japanese War of 1894
until its surrender to Allied forces in 1945?

Conclusions

The Marco Polo affair can be seen as a link in a long chain of anti-Jewish publi-
cations that appeared in Japan in the 1990s. Earlier, as noted, Uno Masami had
explicitly denied the Holocaust in books published by the magazine’s publisher,
Bungei Shunju. The article appearing in Marco Polo, however, was the most
salient case of Japanese antisemitism in the postwar era. Moreover, its publi-
cation marked the first occasion on which Jews not only effectively retaliated
against a specific piece of propaganda but succeeded as well in drawing attention
to the broader issue of Holocaust denial and Japanese antisemitism. Indeed, the
Marco Polo affair was a turning point in the long struggle over the Jews’ image in
Japan. In its wake, the Jews merited massive positive exposure, while a warning
was issued to producers of antisemitic material that their activities were being
monitored and would no longer be tolerated.
Massive exposure, it is true, had negative effects as well. A few months later,
another Holocaust denial scandal surfaced, which demonstrated that Japanese
insensitivity (perhaps motivated as well by a desire for free publicity) had by no
means vanished from the scene. Kimura Aiji, the almost unknown author of a
Holocaust denial book, sued for libel two critics who had written an article attack-
ing the book in the weekly Shukan Kinyôbi. In typical Japanese fashion, the judge
assigned to the case appeared to be slow and indecisive. Yet the final verdict,
delivered on February 16, 1999, was unequivocal: in dismissing the charges, the
judge ruled that, contrary to Kimura’s claim, Nazi Germany, “as acknowledged
by the international Nuremberg trial, murdered in its concentration camps great
numbers of Jews by poison gas.” ³⁹
Both the Jewish reaction to the Marco Polo affair and the subsequent Jap-
anese response provide some insights concerning future campaigns against

39 For further details, see Kowner, “Rise and Fall of Holocaust Denial in Japan.”
194 Rotem Kowner

Holocaust denial and the broader phenomenon of “intellectual” antisemitism in

countries, such as Japan, that have limited acquaintance with Jews. Obviously,
any engagement against antisemitism requires an organization that surveys the
media and warns of any expression of antisemitism. In this regard, the strategy
of “riding out the storm,” of not responding to antisemitic provocation, seems to
be counterproductive. Similarly, appealing to editors’ or publishers’ goodwill in
combating antisemitism or Holocaust denial appears to be ineffective, since the
initial motive for publication is often the desire to spark a well-publicized scandal
that will lead to increased sales.
Japanese antisemitism appears to this author to be less connected with Jews
or Israel than it is a function of internal factors within Japanese society—includ-
ing the desire of various segments of the Japanese leadership, to deny or sani-
tize elements of Japan’s own wartime past. Nevertheless, among various options,
perhaps the most efficient way to combat antisemitism in Japan is to launch a
coordinated counterattack that combines the awakening of the Japanese and
foreign media, criticism voiced by well-known foreign personalities, politi-
cal intervention, and even economic sanctions. When all of these energies are
brought to bear, as happened in the Marco Polo affair, we may witness the con-
tinuation of a gradual change of Japanese attitudes toward Jews. Jewish concerns
may come to be treated with greater awareness and sensitivity instead of being
demonized.
Mark Weitzman
Globalization, Conspiracy Theory,
and the Shoah¹
Ever since the beginnings of right-wing extremism, antisemitism has been one
of the dominant ideological foundations that has permeated every aspect of
the movement and its thought. George L. Mosse once pointed out: “Just as the
right and its nationalism transformed its own myths into concrete symbols, so
the enemy was not left abstract; he was embodied in Jews and parliamentari-
ans.”² While for most educated strata, antisemitism became unacceptable after
the Second World War and the revelations of the Holocaust, recent events have
shown that antisemitism, often disguised as anti-Zionism or criticism of Israel
has now begun to appear at all levels of society. It is the Jewish State which now
embodies “the enemy” of humanity. For current right-wing extremists, antisem-
itism has taken on even greater importance since the birth of the State of Israel
brought Jews into the public sphere of the Western World as equal actors. This
gave antisemites a new focus. Now Jews are not only pulling strings behind the
scenes, but they are playing starring roles on the world stage. A further layer of
hate based on this switch has been added to ancient stereotypes. After centuries
of secret manipulation, the Jew has come out of the closet, as it were, and has
begun to influence, or even control, the world. Thus, the hatred of the antisemite
for the Jew has perhaps even more of a force than before. This was anticipated in
the last political testament of Adolf Hitler, when he wrote:

Centuries will pass away but…the hatred against those finally responsible…international
Jewry and its helpers will grow.... I have also made it quite plain that, if the nations of
Europe are again to be regarded as mere shares to be bought and sold by these international
conspirators in money and finance, then that race, Jewry, which is the real criminal of this
murderous struggle, will be saddled with the responsibility.³

1 This is a much revised and expanded version of the article “Antisemitismus und Holocaust-
Leugnung: Permanente Elemente des globalen Rechts-extremismus,” that originally appeared
in Globalisierter Rechts-extremismus? Die extremische Rechte in der Ara der Globaisierung,
edited by Thomas Greven and Thomas Grumke (Wiesbaden, 2006). I am grateful for their
permission to use it here and to Robert S. Wistrich for his editorial work on the text.
2 George L. Mosse, “Community in Nationalism, Fascism and the Radical Right,” in idem,
Confronting the Nation (Hanover, 1993), 44–45.
3 http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/documents/poltest.htm
196 Mark Weitzman

Antisemitism, always a constant on the radical Right, was commanded by one

of its most iconic figures to avenge itself against the perceived “Jewish victory”
at the end of the Second World War. In this effort, the far Right continued to
embrace the older, traditional forms of antisemitism, while looking for new paths
and methods to reach a wider audience and overcome the stigma associated with
mass murder. This is a pattern Robert Chazan described a few years ago when he
wrote: “every new stage in the evolution of anti-Jewish thinking is marked by a
dialectical interplay between a prior legacy of negative stereotypes and the reali-
ties of a new social context.”⁴
This is the case with right-wing extremism, which appears in a variety of
forms, but invariably relies on traditional antisemitism as both the common
thread and underlying explanation of all world problems. These varieties can
include traditional neo-Nazi groups, skinheads, Holocaust denial groups, or reli-
gious extremists.
Neo-Nazism, a term which encompasses a variety of meanings, continues
to be an international presence. In the United States, there is currently a period
of flux within the movement, as long-time leaders like Dr. William Pierce of the
National Alliance and Richard Butler of the Aryan Nation have died, and some
of their possible successors like Matt Hale of the World Church of the Creator
have been sentenced to long prison terms. This has left a vacuum that figures like
David Duke are attempting to fill. Duke, whose group EURO (European-American
Unity and Rights Organization) is one of the many that claim an international
presence, has devoted much energy to positioning himself to fill the movement’s
leadership gap. This included spending time in Russia and the Ukraine, where he
established himself sufficiently to be listed as a faculty member at a Ukrainian
university.⁵
Duke also managed to bring together a number of prominent U.S. neo-Nazis,
who met under his auspices in New Orleans in May, 2004. There they signed a
document called the New Orleans Protocol, promising cooperation amongst the
leadership and various factions of the movement. Along with the pledges came
an aggressive and extensive assertion of antisemitism, which led one observer to
write that

During the meeting, Duke singled out Jews as the source of the world’s problems.... Most
of conference participants’ ire was directed at what they consider to be a worldwide Jewish
conspiracy to destroy the white race through immigration and miscegenation.⁶

4 Robert Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley, 1997), 135.
5 http://www.whitecivilrights.com/flyers/Dr55.pdf
6 http://www.splcenter.org/center/splcreport/article.jsp?aid=83
 Globalization, Conspiracy Theory, and the Shoah 197

The fear of miscegenation, or “race mixing,” has long been part of European
Nazi and American racist groups. However, the New Orleans Protocol particu-
larly emphasized the Jewish role in deliberately encouraging miscegenation to
weaken the white race. In other words, miscegenation was viewed not only as
bad in itself, but as a weapon of the international Jewish conspiracy. According to
Duke, this conspiracy is based on the underlying premise of Judaism, evidenced
by the fact that, in Duke’s opinion “organized Jewry has pursued a successful
agenda that has amassed incredible power in modern times.”⁷ This explanation
serves to explain Duke’s world-view and his motivation. In his own words, he is
compelled to “address what Henry Ford called the ‘world’s foremost problem,
a problem now critical to our people’s survival and freedom.’” ⁸ Duke explains
that his “awakening” refers to the discovery he made as a young man, of “the
shared roots of both Communism and Zionism.”⁹ Having made this discovery, he
went on to investigate Judaism more thoroughly, and came to the discovery that
what he calls “Jewish Supremacism” is at the root of all the major problems that
we now face.¹⁰ Thus, for example, 9/11 was caused by Israeli actions (“Israel and
its control over American foreign policy was the primary reason for this terror-
ism against America”).¹¹ Globalization is also a Jewish scheme that needs to be
opposed:

For the last few decades of my life I have earnestly tried to inform people that those who
are the true forces behind globalism are in actuality, racial supremacists. But, they are not
the so-called racial supremacists the media talks about. They are not European, African or
Asian supremacists, they are Jewish supremacists.¹²

And, of course, no mention of the Jewish conspiracy to control the world would
be complete without a reference to the classic text of antisemitic propaganda, the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion. While the Protocols remain a staple of antisemitic
conspiracy theorists, it is certainly no surprise to find that Duke has given them a
new, updated look.¹³ His book, My Awakening, which alleges a Jewish plot to take

7 David Duke, “Preface,” Jewish Supremacism at http://www.davidduke.com/ index.

php?p=129
8 David Duke, My Awakening, Chapter 15, at http://www.davidduke.com
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 David Duke, One Year Later: The Real Causes of the 911 Attack, at http://www.davidduke.com
12 David Duke, The Lies of Globalism, at http://www.davidduke.com
13 On the history and present uses of the Protocols, along with a critical analysis and
refutation of its text, see Steven L. Jacobs and Mark Weitzman, Dismantling the Big Lie: The
Protocols of the Elders of Zion (New York, 2003); Andrian Kreye, “Die Falschung,” Suddeutsche
198 Mark Weitzman

over the world, is described by one sympathetic critic as “eclipsing” the Protocols
themselves.¹⁴
Duke has also embraced other themes that can help him to popularize the move-
ment, and shore up his leadership claims. For example, he has joined those who
use ecological concerns to broaden the reach of the movement. For these theo-
rists, there is no contradiction between ecology and neo-Nazism. In fact, ecolog-
ical concerns are a direct outgrowth of their National Socialist philosophies. In
Duke’s writings we find this spelled out directly:

I do, though, have an abiding love for our White race and the civilization and values that it
created. I want my children and all my descendants to live in a free and healthy society, not
a Third World hovel. I want to preserve the unique character and beauty of my people the
same way that, as an ecology-minded individual, I desire the preservation of the Blue Whale
or the great African Elephant.”¹⁵

For Duke, it is the Jews who are the enemies of ecology. Motivated by greed, they
will do anything, including exploiting nature, to turn a profit. Duke asks “do we
really want the Third world to be made into economic colonies for the New World
Order and the new globalism? What will this do to them, to their own cultures,
to the well being of the world’s ecology?” And all this to benefit “the true forces
behind globalism (who) are in actuality, racial supremacists.”¹⁶
I have used Duke’s writings to sketch out some of the newer themes that
have become part of the current far-right discourse. These motifs, such as the
emergence of anti-globalization or ecology were often seen as part of the left
or liberal agenda. They have been reworked to fit into right wing extremist dis-
course, retooled by giving them an antisemitic cast. But these adaptations are
by no means limited to ideologues like David Duke.¹⁷ The basic idea was already

Zeitung, 25-26 May 2005, presents a recent German perspective on the current status of the
Protocols at the 100th anniversary of their appearance.
14 The citation is taken from a review entitled “Jewish Supremacism: A Powerful Expose of
International Zionism” attributed to Edgar Johnston, Ph.D., found online at various sites,
including http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/USA/019.htm This is the website of the Adelaide
Institute, Australia’s most notorious Holocaust denial group. Johnston attributed this statement
to “prominent Jewish leaders in Russia,” whom he did not identify.
15 David Duke, “America is at the crossroads,” 23 Oct. 2004, http:// www.davidduke.com/
index.php?p=22
16 David Duke, “The Lies of Globalism,” 23 Oct. 2004, http:// www.davidduke.com/index.
php?p=11
17 See now the recent Southern Poverty Law Center article, “Syria/Iran: Duke, Other Anti-
Semites, Propagandize in Middle East,” Intelligence Report (Spring 2006), http://www.
splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=620
 Globalization, Conspiracy Theory, and the Shoah 199

expressed earlier by deeper and more original neo-Nazi thinkers, such as the late
William Pierce in the United States, or Horst Mahler in Germany. Pierce had actu-
ally articulated such a view as far back as 1976, when he said that

There are, in fact, several issues on which we are closer to what would ordinarily be consid-
ered the left-wing or liberal position than we are to the conservative or right-wing position.
One of these issues is the ecology issue: the protection of our natural environment, the
elimination of pollution, and the protection of wildlife. And there are also other issues in
which we are closer to the liberals than to the conservatives, although I doubt that we agree
with them completely on any issue; just as we seldom, if ever, agree completely with the
right-wing on any issue.¹⁸

Thus, nearly three decades before Duke proposed a similar perspective, we can
find a clear statement of this theme. And, of course, we find the same diabolical
causality which invokes “the Jewish assault on all our values and institutions.”¹⁹
Later in life Pierce was also using anti-globalization as a theme. In a broadcast
of 5 September 1998, Pierce began by saying that “Every few months for the past
several years I have used this program to warn against the policy of economic glo-
balization.” Only a few months later Pierce explicitly charged Jews with being the
prime movers of globalization, when he wrote that “the process of globalization
(is) being promoted by the Jews and their allies, whether international capital-
ists or deranged liberals.”²⁰ The neo-Nazi extremist, Horst Mahler, also began his
career on the far left as a lawyer connected with the Red Army Faction, more pop-
ularly known as the Baader-Meinhof Group in West Germany. Trained as a lawyer,
Mahler defended Andreas Baader in the early 1970s, and then was jailed for par-
ticipating in a violent shootout that freed him for a while. While in prison, Mahler
had an epiphany and turned to the right, eventually ending up in the 1990s with
the neo-Nazi NPD. Mahler left that party to join Deutsches Kolleg, which consid-
ers itself as the theoretical arm of those who hope to reconstitute a Fourth Reich.
Mahler’s thought contains a typically fascistic mix of left and right. For example,
like both Pierce and Duke he is virulently against globalization. Mahler viewed
the September 11 attacks as the first shot in a war against globalization.²¹
Writing ten days after the events of 9/11, Mahler said that

18 William Pierce, “Our Cause,” http://www.nationalvanguard.org/ story.php?id=3482

19 Ibid.
20 William Pierce, “Nationalism vs. the New World Order,” in Free Speech (May 1998); http://
www.natvan.com/free-speech/fs985c.html
21 Jessica Stern, “The Protean Enemy,” Foreign Affairs (July/August 2003).
200 Mark Weitzman

Globalism, already powerfully damaged by the runaway world economic crisis, will sink
down upon itself, like the towers of Manhattan, under a thousand dagger strikes from
Islamic fundamentalists. This collapse will finally also be the signal to the [various] peoples
in the metropolises to revolt.²²

According to Mahler, 9/11 meant that “Now—for the first time—a military beating
has been inflicted on American ground, upon the war of extermination of the
Globalists against national cultures.”²³ Even before 9/11, Mahler made it clear that
he saw Jews as being inextricably linked to globalization. In an article dated from
March 2001, he wrote

We have to find this prospect unpleasant, especially since this power hides itself behind the
smoke-screen of fine-sounding words like “enlightenment,” “tolerance,” “emancipation,”
“Modernism,” “human rights,” “free trade,” and “Globalism,” and attacks and destroys
nations and peoples from its place of concealment.

Mahler later made it clear that the power referred to was “the Jews” by writing
that in “the present World situation, Globalism, [should be linked to] the objec-
tive existence of the Jewish Question.”²⁴
In an interview posted on the Internet, Mahler further claimed that “there is
no American war against terrorism, (but instead) we are witnessing a worldwide
campaign of terror, a proxy war conducted by the USA on behalf of the Jews.” He
explained that:

What is generally meant by “Democracy” is actually Jewish rule, which Jewish plutocrats
exercise through their control of global finance, the monetary system and the media.... I do
know that the nations are going to liberate themselves from the Jewish yoke.”

He even resorted to traditional Christian antisemitism by quoting John 8:44—“For

ye have the devil as father, and ye wish to carry out your father’s desire.”²⁵
A recent analysis of Mahler’s ideology concluded:

22 http://www.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/mahler/partfour.html
23 Mahler, “Independence day—2001,” 12 Sept. 2001, http:// www.alphalink.com.
au/~radnat/mahler/partthree.html
24 Mahler, “Final Solution of the Jewish Question: Discovery of God instead of Jewish
Hatred,” http://www.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/mahler/parttwo.html A valuable summary of
antisemitism in the anti-globalization movement is in Mark Strauss, “Antiglobalism’s Jewish
Problem,” in Foreign Policy (Nov./Dec. 2003); reprinted in Ron Rosenbaum, Those Who Forget
the Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism (New York, 2004), 271–85. See also Robert S. Wistrich,
A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihadi (New York, 2010).
25 http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1781479#post1781479
 Globalization, Conspiracy Theory, and the Shoah 201

Mahler condemned the U.S. as being responsible for this world order because of its “limit-
less craving for enrichment and power,” which showed no consideration for the fundamen-
tals of life of nations and destroyed economies and cultures. His anti-Americanism became
intertwined with antisemitism when he targeted the American East Coast as “that web of
power, money and the military.” Mahler equated “imperialists” with “globalists,” claiming
that they governed the US which then bled other nations dry. The financial power of the
American East Coast was connected, Mahler said, to the so-called cult of Jahwe, which he
defined as “the cult of world power of the chosen people.” Thus, the linkage was complete:
solidarity with the Islamist attacks on the US, the struggle against imperialistic US power,
or more precisely against Jewish financial control of the East Coast, and the fight against
“globalization” and the Jews.²⁶

These new forms of antisemitism, particularly as expressed in anti-American

feeling, have taken a significant turn in the attempt by right-wing extremists to
reach out to the Islamic world. Radical Islam is viewed as the only force capable
of challenging the United States and the Western concepts of liberal democracy,
racial or religious equality. The principle of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”
applies, as does the vicious antisemitism espoused by Horst Mahler ever since
his espousal of a völkisch-racist worldview. As with the German National Social-
ists before the Holocaust, Mahler equates democracy with the rule of Jews who
control the international financial system from which the “peoples” are seeking
their national liberation.
Indeed this “liberation” has currently taken the shape of the Islamist war on
the West. Again, in Mahler’s words:

[T]he “September Lie,” the gruesome fairy tale about Osama bin Laden’s unprovoked attack
on the USA, is now being challenged worldwide.... From the unmistakable victory of Wash-
ington’s opponent has emerged the worldwide realization that the Jewish media monopoly
represents a mortal danger for all mankind.”²⁷

Mahler makes clear that the common enemy of Islamists and right-wing extrem-
ists is Israel and also the United States (along with the West), which is its tool.
This new alliance may still be utopian for most right-wing extremists, but nev-
ertheless such attempts have been initiated, based to a large extent on mutually
shared antisemitism. For example, David Duke, in a recent commentary posted
on his website said that:

26 http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw2002-3/hentges.htm
27 http://www.stormfront.org/archive/t-194896Horst_Mahler_on_the_Jews.html
202 Mark Weitzman

the Jewish supremacist globalists seek to destroy the identity and heritage of all peoples
while erecting a supra-national state of Jewish supremacy not only over the people of Pal-
estine but over the entire planet.²⁸

Duke has in recent years carried his message to places like Iran and Bahrain,
where in 2002 he delivered lectures claiming that Israel was behind the 9/11 ter-
rorist attacks in New York, and that the attacks were planned as a pretext to push
the U.S. government into war with the Arab world. Duke’s message was picked up
by various Arab media sources, which helped it reach a wider audience includ-
ing the Saudi Arabian Arab News, which featured a report about Duke’s talks in
May 2002. The website Tanzeem e-islami eagerly reproduced Duke’s analysis of
9/11, entitled “The Real Evil Spirit,” which blamed “the Jewish Lobby and media
power…for alienat[ing] the entire Arab world” and provoking the 9/11 attacks.²⁹
Another right-wing extremist who developed similar links is the Swiss-born
financier Achmed Huber (originally Albert Friedrich Armand Huber). Huber
differs from Duke in that he formally converted to Islam in 1962 in Egypt, after
studying Islam in Europe with the extremist Muslim Brotherhood. Huber’s neo-
Nazi links began very early. In a 1965 interview he spoke of the influence of the
Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini on his outlook. Husseini collab-
orated with the Nazis, met with Hitler, recruited and even organized a SS divi-
sion of Bosnian Muslim volunteers. Huber at this time also spoke positively of
another Nazi, Johann von Leers, who had converted to Islam, taking the name of
Omar Amin. Von Leers was a fanatical antisemite in the Third Reich who became
a leading figure in Gamel Abdel Nasser’s propaganda machine.³⁰ Huber was also
associated with another shadowy figure, the Swiss lawyer François Genoud who
consistently tried to bridge the Nazi-Islamist spectrum. Before his suicide in 1996,
Genoud worked with the terrorist Palestinian Radical Front for the Liberation of
Palestine. At the same time, he held the legal rights to the writings of Hitler, Martin
Bormann, and Goebbels. He was also behind the legal defense of the notorious
Nazi war criminal, Klaus Barbie.³¹ More recently, Huber allied with Horst Mahler
and spoke at NPD conventions in 2000 and 2001. At the same time, his active par-

28 David Duke, “Syria’s Assad speaks of Jewish media attack on identity of people,” 8 June
2005 at http://www.davidduke.com/index.php?p=302
29 http://www.tanzeem.org/resources/articles/articles/david duke-the real evil spirit.htm
30 On von Leers see Robert Wistrich, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany (London, 1982); Gregory Paul
Wegner, Anti-Semitism and Schooling Under the Third Reich (New York, 2002) examines the
impact of von Leers’ propaganda on the German educational system during the Nazi era.
31 On Genoud, see David Lee Preston, “Hitler’s Swiss Connection,” Philadelphia Inquirer, 5
Jan. 1997.
 Globalization, Conspiracy Theory, and the Shoah 203

ticipation in Islamist activity included being one of the five members of the man-
aging committee of Al Taqwa (Fear of God) Management, a Swiss-based financial
institution believed by the United States and European governments to be sup-
porting bin Laden by laundering money and providing other forms of assistance.
In November 2001, Huber was listed by the U.S. government as number 56 among
62 organizations and individuals suspected of involvement in terrorist activities,
and is not permitted to enter the United States.³² More recently, the NPD journal
Deutsche Stimme published an interview with the head of the local Muslim com-
munity in its May 2006 edition. The interview presented an explanation of Islam,
rather than an inflammatory attack on Jews or the United States, but it showed
that the German extreme Right was ready to give a sympathetic hearing to Islam.³³
The career of David Myatt represents yet another version of this extreme
right-wing and Islamist axis. Myatt was a longtime member of notorious British
neo-Nazi groups. Indeed he was even described by an English newspaper as the
“ideological heavyweight” of Combat 18, closely identified with National Social-
ism.³⁴ His 1997 pamphlet, A Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution was said to have
inspired David Copeland, convicted for a series of bombings in London in 1999.
A year earlier, Myatt had converted to Islam, but still continued to write neo-Nazi
material that can be found on websites such as the Aryan Nation and White Rev-
olution. Myatt, who took the Moslem name of Abdul-Aziz Ibn Myatt, continued to
be a prolific writer after his conversion. As one website devoted to his work puts
it “Many of these articles praise and defend Osama bin Laden, and praise and
justify suicide attacks (or “martyrdom operations” as he and others call them) in
Palestine, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Myatt—using his Muslim persona—also
defended the September 11 attacks and the bombings in Bali. Indeed, “Abdul
Aziz” Myatt wrote one of the most detailed defenses in the English language of
martyrdom operations, entitled Are Martyrdom Operations Lawful According to
Quran and Sunnah?³⁵ Myatt has also made a point of trying to amplify the connec-
tion between Islam and National Socialism. For example, a posting in his name
to the neo-Nazi Aryan Nation website contains “The National-Socialist Guide to
Understanding Islam” which is introduced as an attempt to find a “genuine and

32 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/november01/moneylist_11-7.html
33 http://www.deutsche-stimme.de/Ausgaben2006/Sites/05-06-Gespraech.html My thanks
to Thomas Grumke for this reference.
34 The Observer, 9 Feb. 2003, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/ review/story
/0,6903,891761,00.html
35 J. R. Wright, “David Myatt Biographical Information: The Life and Times of David Myatt,”
http://www.geocities.com/davidmyatt/biog.html According to Wright, this article was even
used by Hamas as a justification of some of its own terrorist activities.
204 Mark Weitzman

worthwhile co-operation between Muslims and people, such as National-Social-

ists, who accept a non-Muslim way of life and who are also fighting the dishon-
our which is Zionism.”³⁶ Elsewhere, Myatt speaks openly of the proposed alliance
between radical Islamists and neo-Nazis. His article “Why Islam is our Ally” ends
with the following conclusion:

But many, many Muslims, and some National-Socialists, have seen through the lies, the
propaganda of the Zionists—for we know what is going on, in this world, and why. Muslims
have and are gathering together to try and do something practical about it by taking up
arms. Surely, now it is the turn of National-Socialists, who can and who should join with or
aid those warriors of Islam who are fighting, in a practical way, the Zionists, who are fight-
ing the lackeys of the Zionists, and who are fighting those governments who are doing the
dirty work for their Zionist masters.³⁷

While questions have been raised about the sincerity of Myatt’s conversion, or
whether he still is a Muslim, there can be no question that the underlying link for
Myatt, as for others, was the hatred of Jews shared by both the extreme right wing/
neo-Nazi movement and radical Islam. Myatt also uses “Nature” to justify Nazi
ideology in Darwinian terms, writing that “In essence, Aryan National-Socialism
is a working in harmony with Nature to produce further evolutionary change.”³⁸
Over the past few years, Myatt’s influence in the movement has steadily
grown. Originally limited essentially to a British audience, he has received wider
exposure in recent times through his conversion, after which he traveled and
spoke in some Arab countries. In the West, his writings, once considered too eso-
teric and intellectual, can be found on popular neo-Nazi websites such as Storm-
front, Aryan Nation, White Revolution, and others. His views also reflect the
movement’s growing interest in creating a link with radical Islam, based on the
common ideology of antisemitism. For example, the Aryan Nation, a group that
achieved a certain echo in the United States in the 1980s has since fallen on hard
times—having lost their compound and suffered the death of their leader, Richard
Butler. They now feature on the front page of their website greetings in Arabic,
along with the following quotes—among others from Obergruppenführer Gottlob
Berger in 1942: “...a link is created between Islam and National-Socialism on an
open, honest basis. It will be directed in terms of blood and race from the North,
and in the ideological-spiritual sphere from the East.” Another quote comes from

36 http://www.agentofchaos.invisionzone.com/lofiversion/index.php/t696.html
37 David Myatt, Why Islam is our Ally, http://nexion3.tripod.com/islam_ally.html
38 David Myatt, “The Philosophical Foundations of Aryan Religion,” http://www.stormfront.
org/archive/t-98628The_Philosophical_Foundations_of_ Aryan_Religion.html
 Globalization, Conspiracy Theory, and the Shoah 205

Palestinian Arab leader Haj Amin al-Husseini, speaking on Berlin radio in 1944:
“Arabs! Rise as one and fight for your sacred rights. Kill the Jews wherever you
find them. This pleases God, history, and religion. This saves your honor.”
This recent emphasis on rebuilding a Nazi-Islamic alliance is still perceived
as new and questionable by some of the more traditional members of the Aryan
Nation.³⁹ On the other hand, those in favor of this link can invoke the respect
and attention that Adolf Hitler and other Nazis expressed for Islam. Clearly, in a
fractured movement, the current Aryan Nations sees potential benefits in being
identified with Islamist extremists. This contrasts vividly with William Pierce’s
insistence after 9/11 on dissociating himself from those white supremacists who
admire the “testicular fortitude” of the Muslim hijackers.⁴⁰
There is anonther area where Arabs and the neo-Nazis have found common
ground, namely in Holocaust denial (known as the Auschwitz Lie in Germany).
This has encouraged the integration of Arab antisemitism and anti-Zionism
into the white supremacist program. The annual conferences of the Institute for
Historical Review, the center of the Holocaust denial movement in the United
States, included over the years speakers and topics that reflect an Arab perspec-
tive. The 2002 conference program featured “Arab scholar Said Arikat (who) will
shed new light on the background to the dramatically unfolding events in the
Middle East.”⁴¹ David Irving’s conferences have also featured speakers on current
Middle Eastern topics from the “Arab” standpoint.⁴² The website of Ahmed Rami,
Radio Islam, is especially notorious for the intermixing of classical antisemitism,
Holocaust denial, and strident anti-Zionism in a Muslim perspective. Rami, a
veteran agitator who fled Morocco and served a prison sentence for hate speech
in Sweden, has an Arabic section on his website and has been featured on Al-Ja-
zeera, the Arab news network.⁴³

39 http://www.aryan-nations.org/ Another dissenting voice is that of veteran Alaskan neo-

Nazi David Pringle, who has spoken out against David Duke’s Middle Eastern outreach. Pringle
was quoted as claiming that Duke ran the risk of becoming known as another “Hanoi Jane,”
referring to the controversial visit of Jane Fonda to Hanoi during the Vietnam War; http://www.
splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/ article.jsp?aid=620
40 See the report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, where it is reported that “leader
William Pierce recently upbraided Roper for a private comment he made—wishing that his
members had ‘half as much testicular fortitude’ as the Sept. 11 hijackers.... Pierce called
Roper’s praise for the mass murderers ‘ill-advised private comments.’” http://www.splcenter.
org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=125
41 http://www.ihr.org/conference/14thconf/speakers.html
42 http://www.fpp.co.uk/cinc/2004/program.html
43 http://rami.tv/
206 Mark Weitzman

The first real attempt to bring together prominent leaders of Holocaust denial,
neo-Nazism, and Arab anti-Zionism was a non-event, although one whose pro-
posed agenda was noteworthy. A conference scheduled for the spring of 2001
was organized by Jürgen Graf who fled Switzerland to avoid a prison sentence
for hate speech and had ended up in Iran. There he found a welcoming atmo-
sphere and support, as the Iranians officially embraced Holocaust denial.⁴⁴ The
proposed conference featured a roster of international neo-Nazis and Holocaust
deniers including William Pierce, Horst Mahler, Roger Garaudy, and Robert Fau-
risson along with Arab Holocaust deniers and “representatives of Hezbollah and
other radical Muslim groups.”⁴⁵ After a great deal of international condemnation,
the conference was finally cancelled by the Lebanese government, although a
watered down version was held later in Jordan without most of the major figures
who had been scheduled to appear in Beirut.⁴⁶ However, Iran has persisted in
strenuous efforts to become an international center for Holocaust denial. In
December 2005, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad touched off an inter-
national outcry when he labeled the Holocaust “a myth.”⁴⁷ Ahmadinejad was not
finished, however, and called for an international conference on the topic to be
held in January 2006. He even sent an individual invitation to British Prime Min-
ister Tony Blair who had severely criticized Ahmeadinejad’s earlier statement.⁴⁸
The conference did eventually take place, but on a much lower level, involving
the roster of familiar names from Western Holocaust denial circles along with the
Iranian participants.⁴⁹

44 According to the Institute of Historical Review’s own website “Iran’s official radio voice
to the world, IRIB, has in recent years expressed support for Holocaust revisionism by
broadcasting sympathetic interviews with leading negationist scholars and activists. Several
interviews with IHR Director Mark Weber have been aired on the English-language service, and
similar interviews have been broadcast with Ernst Zündel in German and with Ahmed Rami in
Arabic. IRIB short-wave radio reaches millions in the Middle East, Europe and Asia.” http://
www.ihr.org/conference/ beirutconf/background.html
45 Peter Finn, “Unlikely Allies Bound by a Common Hatred: Neo-Nazis Find They Share Views of
Militant Muslim Groups on U.S., Israel,” Washington Post Foreign Service, 29 April 2002.
46 Ibid.
47 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4529198.stm
48 www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,1876164,00.html
49 While veteran Holocaust deniers like Robert Faurisson and Horst Mahler were in touch
with the Iranians before the conference (see “European Holocaust Deniers Involved in Iranian
Holocaust Conference Plans,” 27 Feb. 2006, at http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/updates.
htm ), Australians Frederick Toben and Richard Krege, both of the Adelaide Institute, were the
Western focal points of the conference. Their report can be found at the Adelaide Institute’s
website http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/Iran/conference1.htm
 Globalization, Conspiracy Theory, and the Shoah 207

A few years ago, Meir Litwak analyzed the Iranian case and its special atti-
tudes toward the Holocaust, and drew some valuable conclusions.⁵⁰ He points out
that Iranian Holocaust denial “adopts the discourse and arguments of Western
neo-Nazis and anti-Semites in order to grant it pseudo-scientific value.”⁵¹ He goes
on to add that the validity of using these Western sources, despite Iran’s general
estrangement from Western intellectual discourse, is justified by the “objectiv-
ity” of these sources on Israel and the Middle East. In other words, the fact that
these Western sources are “anti-Zionist” or antisemitic is all that is needed to
justify their use in Iranian Holocaust denial discourse, while dismissing all other
evidence as merely propaganda. The fact that Western negationist sources are
exploited is covered up and wrapped in a pseudo-scholarly veneer, in order to
give it greater reach and authority. This also demonstrates the intensive effort
made to appeal to an international audience. Iran’s goal of exporting Holocaust
denial can be seen not only from the conferences that it has supported, but is
also evident from the fact that a great deal of its Holocaust denial propaganda
has been found in the state-owned English media. But Iran has even gone further
in becoming a center of Holocaust denial. As witnessed by the words of Presi-
dent Ahmadinejad, the campaign has moved Holocaust denial from the murky
fringes of extremism where it generally exists in the West to the center of state
policy. Over the last decade and a half, through various state political and media
venues, the regime in Tehran has hosted or encouraged a whole roster of Western
Holocaust deniers, including some who have found refuge in Iran after being con-
victed of hate speech violations in the West.⁵² Moreover, not only is Holocaust
denial at the heart of Iranian power, it is unchallenged—even if on one occasion
a leader of Iran’s tiny Jewish community did react to President Ahmadinejad’s
notorious statements.⁵³ Where Holocaust denial in the West can be met with every
form of opposition, from academic to political and legal, in Iran it is the only

50 Meir Litwak, “The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Holocaust: Anti-Semitism and Anti-
Zionism,” Journal of Israeli History 25, no. 1 (Mar. 2006): 267–84.
51 Ibid., 280.
52 The list of visitors, according to Litwak, “Islamic Republic,” 277–80, includes Roger
Garaudy who, after his 1998 conviction in France met with President Khatami, Supreme Leader
Khamene’i, and Ahmed Rami, who had a special session of the Parliament held in his honor in
1990; Jürgen Graf and Wolfgang Frohlich were two European deniers who found asylum in Iran;
and, as noted above, Iranian state radio interviewed Mark Weber (in English), Ernst Zündel (in
German), and Ahmed Rami (in Arabic).
53 See, for example, “Iran: Jewish Leader Criticizes President For Holocaust Denial,” Radio Free
Europe, http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/02/fb25e81f-bce9-4291-acdb-cf2c5c69fe92.
html
208 Mark Weitzman

perspective offered by the State and its subservient media. The Iranian deniers
seek to demolish the Holocaust as a means of undermining Western support for
Israel—claiming that both the West and the Islamic world are victims of a massive
Jewish plot reminiscent of the infamous Protocols of the Elders of Zion.⁵⁴ Litwak
wonders whether as younger Iranians grow restless about the government’s offi-
cial message, they might not grow out of Holocaust denial as one of the themes
discredited by bankrupt conspiracy theories.⁵⁵
The Holocaust denial movement is another example of how globalization has
affected extremism. While the movement has always attempted to see itself as
international in scope, both technology and politics have recently taken it further
in that direction. Not by chance, Holocaust denial has been centered in California
for almost three decades, in particular at the Institute for Historical Review, cur-
rently located in Newport Beach, California.⁵⁶ The Institute, originally founded
under the influence of Willlis Carto, a major force in American far Right extrem-
ism for decades, has in recent years been operating on its own, after Carto was
ousted in a power struggle in 1994. The struggle for control of the IHR centered on
a number of issues, but prominent amongst them was that Carto wanted to take
the Institute’s agenda into a more “racialist” direction, in other words, to expand
into a wider range of topics. On the other hand, the IHR’s staff, including Direc-
tor Mark Weber, wanted to keep the focus on Holocaust denial.⁵⁷ Without Carto’s
financial support, the IHR was dependent on direct mail approaches for sales and

54 For recent Iranian use of the Protocols, see Litwak, “Islamic Republic ,” 272.
55 Ibid., 280–81.
56 See Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust (New York, 1993), 50–51; also Pierre Vidal-
Naquet’s Assassins of Memory (New York, 1993)—an intriguing look at some of the discourse
and cultural assertions, along with the implications of Holocaust denial, particularly in France.
More recently, see Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says The
Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It (Berkeley, 2000). There is also a substantial
literature that has grown out of the David Irving trial, such as D. D. Guttenplan, The Holocaust
on Trial (New York, 2001). Expert witnesses have published works reflecting their testimony,
including Richard Evans, Lying About Hitler (New York, 2001) and Robert Jan van Pelt, The Case
for Auschwitz: Evidence from the Irving Trial (Bloomington, Ind., 2002). Deborah Lipstadt’s
account is found in History on Trial (New York, 2005), while David Irving’s version is found at his
website, http://www.fpp.co.uk/
57 See, for example, the statement by Arthur Butz, a longtime Holocaust denier “During
1992–1993 Willis Carto sought to transform the Journal of Historical Review into a journal with
a racialist political mission and editorial content.” http://www.ihr.org/other/endorsements.
html The page is a list of Holocaust denial luminaries who supported the ousting of Carto.
 Globalization, Conspiracy Theory, and the Shoah 209

fundraising.⁵⁸ Therefore, they had to tailor their approach to a perspective that

would attract the support needed for survival; and according to the IHR leader-
ship, that theme was Holocaust denial, rather than race or politics.
Outside of being the source for a great deal of the denial writings that appear
online, the California IHR website claimed 2½ million hits in September 2005
alone.⁵⁹ The first comparison I made was in November 2005, which I compared to
the IHR’s November 2004, page. In 2004, there were 18 stories featured and out of
those 18, 16 dealt with the Holocaust, Jews, Nazis, or Israel. This was thoroughly
consistent with their program, which in their own words was described as being
centered on “the Holocaust issue.” They also assert that “their work calls into
question aspects of the orthodox Holocaust extermination story, and highlights
specific Holocaust exaggerations and falsehoods....”⁶⁰
However, by November 2005 the picture was different. Of the 23 stories then
posted, only 14 had the themes of Holocaust and Jews. A recent look at the IHR
website confirms this shift. Of the 14 stories featured, none referred to the Holo-
caust, almost all were concerned with current events, including the war on Hez-
bollah and the war in Iraq.⁶¹
The current negationist theme is clearly an attempt to build on anti-war
feeling, both in the United States and abroad, and to use it to subtly attract and
convince users of the argument of the site. For, if we look closely, what exactly
is the message? As stated above, Jews distort reality and manipulate history
for their own purposes. Thus, the distortions that are seen as connected to the
way the conflicts in the Middle East are presented turn out to ultimately be just
another example of Jewish conspiracy and manipulation. The title of one of the
IHR articles, “The White House Cabal,” confirms this—with its echoes of a secret
plot to seize control of the world. In a talk in New York entitled “The Challenge
of Jewish-Zionist Power in an Era of Global Struggle” (16 July 2005), IHR director
Mark Weber spelled out the new focus: “no task is more urgent than breaking the
stranglehold of the Jewish-Zionist grip on American political, social and cultural
life.”⁶² The Holocaust was mentioned several times, but was far less central than
the propaganda concerning Israel and the United States in 2006. Similarly, in

58 See Ted O’Keefe, “Exit the Whistleblower: My Fall from Grace from IHR,” http://www.vho.
org/GB/c/TOK/Whistleblower.html
59 http://www.ihr.org/news/110305ReachingNewPeople.html
60 http://www.ihr.org/main/about.shtml
61 http://www.ihr.org/ visited on 3 Aug. 2006.
62 http://www.ihr.org/other/thechallenge.html
210 Mark Weitzman

Australia the focus among deniers like Frederick Toben was at least temporarily
on the Iraq war.
This tactical shift underlined the need to get support (especially financial), as
well as to widen the base and eventually penetrate as far as possible into main-
stream society. To do that it appears that significant elements of the movement
have decided to embrace popular “hot-button” themes, such as anti-globaliza-
tion or anger over the war in Iraq, and to use them as their points of entry, in the
hope that they will help move them away from the margins of Western society.
However, in adopting these themes, they have not surrendered their beliefs.
Instead, they have taken the topics and undergirded them with the tropes of
antisemitism that have always been at the core of their belief structure. Thus,
every issue eventually comes back to the Jews, their manipulations of history
and society, and their malignant influence on the world. In essence, the theme
of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion remains active, only the methodology has
been upgraded to reflect the new age.⁶³ Along with controlling stock markets,
Jews supposedly control multinational corporations and the banks that service
them; instead of war aimed at controlling European powers, they now are behind
Western (U.S.) invasions of the Middle East.
This type of material has been made much more accessible by the increased
use of the Internet. Reaching about one billion people, the Internet has become
the greatest propaganda tool in history, and extremists of all varieties have been
quick to adapt to its use. There are currently about 5,500 extremist websites
online, a jump from merely 1 in 1995.⁶⁴ This has led David Duke to write about
the “White Revolution and the Internet.”⁶⁵ Online one can find Holocaust denial,
Nazi, neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan, skinhead, Christian Identity, neo-pagan, and other
types of antisemitism (and any other form of bigotry as well).⁶⁶ The effect of the
Internet cannot therefore be underestimated. It has kept these ideas current by
preserving every piece of antisemitism that has ever been posted, including arti-
cles that were long forgotten; by breaking down personal inhibitions and national
boundaries; by creating the opportunity to target specific groups; by providing

63 For a more detailed look at the Protocols and its themes, see Jacobs and Weitzman,
Dismantling the Big Lie.
64 Digital Terrorism and Hate (Simon Wiesenthal Center, 2006).
65 For a more extensive look at antisemitism on the Internet, see Mark Weitzman, “The
Internet is Our Sword: Aspects of Online Antisemitism,” in Remembering for the Future: The
Holocaust in an Age of Genocide (London, 2001), 1; 911–25.
66 For a short overview of many of these different groups and ideologies, see Rick Eaton and
Mark Weitzman, The New Lexicon of Hate: The Changing Tactics, Language and Symbols of
America’s Extremists (Los Angeles, 2004).
 Globalization, Conspiracy Theory, and the Shoah 211

a source for revenue and communications; and by increasing the technological

sophistication of their approach. Antisemitism and other forms of extremism
have now moved into the communications mainstream.⁶⁷ This mainstreaming,
along with the other trends outlined above, shows how, sixty-five years after the
Holocaust, antisemitism in its most radical form has come out of the closet and
become an international reality that challenges us every day. Whether it be linked
to globalization, ecology, or the war in Iraq, or the use of the latest technology,
the contemporary discourse of antisemitism proves once more that within every
new stage in the evolution of anti-Jewish thinking there is interplay between the
“legacy of negative stereotypes and the realities of a new social context.”⁶⁸ Any
response to the new manifestations of antisemitism must take into account both
traditional forms of Judeophobia as well as the contemporary realities of global-
ization which have created a new highway for antisemitism. While antisemitism
still exists in localized versions, its global impact is spread dramatically quicker
and more intensively then ever before. Thus responses have to be geared toward
having the same impact. Otherwise, we will be left with the sad reality that we are
fighting a twenty-first century battle with twentieth century weapons, which does
not bode well for the future.

67 See for example Arnold Leese’s “Jewish Ritual Murder,” originally published in 1938, and
can now be found online on many sites, including http://www.ety.com/HRP/booksonline/jrm/
jrm_intro.htm
68 Note 3, above.
Jeffrey Herf
Broadcasting Antisemitism to the Middle
East: Nazi Propaganda during the Holocaust
With the emergence of radical Islam in recent decades, the question of the rela-
tionship between antisemitism in Europe, and hatred of the Jews in Muslim, Arab,
and Persian societies has remained the subject of intense political discussion.
To what extent can the Jew-hatred expressed by the radical Islamists of varying
ideological hues in Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and the government of Iran be
explained by factors indigenous to these societies and cultures experiencing the
pressures of attempted modernization? Or do they also have roots in antisemitic
currents that came to the Middle East from twentieth-century Europe, especially
during the era of fascism and Nazism.¹ Historians of modern Europe have exhaus-
tively documented and analyzed the European impact on Latin America, Africa,
the Middle East, and Asia in the era of colonialism. Until recently, however,
the impact of Nazism and fascism outside Europe was less examined. In recent
years, in part under the impact of contemporary events, this relative disinterest
has given way to a flurry of scholarly interest in Nazi Germany’s efforts to spread
its ideology and policies in the Arab, Persian, and Muslim countries. As a result
of recent research, we have a better understanding of a meeting of hearts and
minds, not a clash of civilizations, that took place in wartime Berlin between pro-
Nazi Arab exiles, on the one hand, and Nazi leaders, on the other. The result of
that conjuncture was the production of thousands of hours of Arabic radio broad-
casts and hundreds of thousands of Arabic leaflets and pamphlets that trans-
lated and diffused Nazism’s radical antisemitism into an easily understandable
political discourse adapted to the political realities of local circumstances in the
Middle East.
Due in part to the fact that Germany’s armed forces were defeated in North
Africa in the fall of 1942, the several million pieces of printed materials in Arabic
dropped from airplanes and distributed by propaganda units working with the
General Erwin Rommel’s Afrika-Korps comprised only a small portion of Nazi
Germany’s propaganda efforts. By far, the most important means used to spread
the Nazi message was shortwave radio beamed to the region by powerful trans-
mitters near Berlin. The archives of the German Foreign Ministry, which directed
the program, hold important materials on the direction and organization of the

1 For a recent essay collection on this issue, see Jeffrey Herf, ed., Antisemitism and Anti-
Zionism in Historical Perspective: Convergence and Divergence (London, 2006).
214 Jeffrey Herf

program. Some texts of broadcasts survive in the files of the Propaganda Ministry.
Yet a combination of Allied bombing raids on government buildings in Berlin, the
chaos of war, and perhaps significant amounts of document destruction meant
that much of the evidence of the Arabic language broadcasts no longer exists in
the German archives.
What did not survive in Berlin was recorded for posterity in wartime Cairo by
officials working in the American Embassy there. Beginning in the fall of 1941,
under the direction of Ambassador Alexander Kirk, a staff equipped with tape
recorders and working with native Arab speakers taped, transcribed, translated,
and sent to Washington a (mostly) weekly set of verbatim English translations of
Nazi Germany’s Arabic language radio broadcasts to the Middle East. Between the
fall of 1941 to the spring of 1945, “Axis Broadcasts in Arabic” resulted in several
thousand pages of texts. Kirk’s despatches were sent to the Office of the Secre-
tary of State and were circulated to the key American (and British) intelligence
agencies as well as to the U.S. Office of War Information that conducted Amer-
ican political warfare. In summer 2007, I found them in the State Department
files of the United States National Archives. Although what I will call “the Kirk
transcripts” were declassified in the 1970s, they have not figured in subsequent
scholarship.² With the recent findings in the American and German archives, we
now have much more evidence regarding Nazi Germany’s efforts to find common
cause with radical Arabs and Muslims and to adapt its central propaganda themes
to circumstances of the Arab and Muslim societies of the Middle East.
Needless to say, a fully adequate history of the reception and impact of this
propaganda and its aftereffects in both Arab nationalist and radical Islamist
ideology will require the efforts of historians who read Arabic and Persian. My
current work will, I hope, be of use to them in that important endeavor.
In The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holo-
caust,³ I asked what had changed between 1939 and 1941 in Nazi Germany in the
nature of antisemitism, which Robert Wistrich aptly called “the longest hatred,”
so that for the first time in its history it became an ideology that incited and legit-
imated genocide.⁴ While George Mosse and many others have documented the
ideological path “towards the Final Solution,” the search for origins and long

2 On some examples of the distribution of the Kirk despatches to other agencies of the United
States government, see “Dimensions of Allied Response to Hitler’s ‘Jewish Politics’ and the
Deepening of the Trap,” in Hitler, the Allies and the Jews, ed. Shlomo Aronson (New York, 2004),
54–64.
3 Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust
(Cambridge, Mass, 2006).
4 See Robert Wistrich, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred (New York, 1991).
 Broadcasting Antisemitism to the Middle East 215

continuities did not bring us to the event itself.⁵ In The Jewish Enemy, I exam-
ined both very famous and very public speeches and essays by Hitler and other
leaders of the Nazi regime as well as lesser-known government directives sent to
the German press to depict the translation of antisemitic ideology into a narra-
tive of ongoing events present as well in the daily and weekly news. My resulting
interpretation of Nazism’s radical antisemitism focused on the following points.
First, the Nazi’s radical antisemitism was an interpretive framework through
which the Nazi leadership misunderstood ongoing events. It was not only a
bundle of prejudices. From the beginning to the end of the war Hitler and his
associates concluded that their paranoid fantasy of an international Jewish con-
spiracy was the key to contemporary history. As E. H. Gombrich, who worked
at the BBC during the war listening to German radio broadcasts, understood,
the Nazis’ interpretation of the actual events of the Second World War through
the distorted and paranoid prism of radical antisemitism comprised the core
element of Nazi propaganda.⁶ The “logical” endpoint of this paranoia was to
push German antisemitism beyond its past eras of persecution to one of geno-
cide. Theirs was an explanatory narrative that seemed to solve key riddles of con-
temporary history. Radical antisemitism offered an explanation of this central
paradox of the Second World War in Europe, namely the emergence, deepening,
and persistence of what Churchill called “the unnatural alliance” between the
Soviet Union and the Western democracies. In the eyes of common sense, Frank-
lin Roosevelt and Churchill had decided to make a pact with a lesser evil Stalin,
in order to defeat a greater evil, Hitler.⁷ From the perspective of Nazi antisemitic
propaganda, the anti-Hitler coalition, along with the entry into the war by the
United States, were the two most powerful pieces of evidence that international
Jewry had created and sustained “the unnatural alliance.”
Second, the key to the radicalization of Nazi antisemitism lay in its over-
whelmingly political accusation, that “international Jewry,” had started and esca-
lated the Second World War in order to exterminate Germany and the Germans.
The regime’s frequently-discussed biological racism was important primar-
ily because it pointed to a bond said to exist among all Jews. Yet though racial

5 George Mosse, Toward the Final Solution: A History of European Racism (Madison, Wisc.,
1985); and idem, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (New
York, 1964, 1998).
6 E. H. Gombrich, Myth and Reality in German Wartime Broadcasts (London, 1970), 18.
7 Jeffrey Herf, “If Hitler Invaded Hell: Distinguishing between Nazism and Communism during
World War II, the Cold War and since the Fall of European Communism,” in The Lesser Evil: Moral
Approaches to Genocide Practices, eds. Helmut Dubiel and Gabriel Motzkin (London, 2004),
182–95.
216 Jeffrey Herf

biology did justify horrible crimes against tens of thousands of persons judged
to be “unworthy of life,” it was not central to the justification for mass murder.⁸
While caricatures of the Jewish body filled the pages of Der Stürmer, the distinc-
tively genocidal components of radical antisemitism derived from beliefs about
what “international Jewry” was alleged to have done, not how Jews looked. It was
the actions of what the Nazis believed was a truly active political actor, “interna-
tional Jewry”—not the Jews’ supposed stereotyped physical features—that have
preoccupied so much scholarship, that stood at the center of the Nazi commit-
ment to mass murder. When the Nazi leaders spoke of what Lucy Dawidowicz
called “the war against the Jews” they were not only referring to the Final Solu-
tion.⁹ Rather it referred as well to the conventional war Nazi Germany was waging
against the anti-Hitler coalition composed of Great Britain, the Soviet Union, the
United States, and other Allies. On many occasions, Nazi propagandists described
the war that the Allies were waging against the Third Reich as “the Jewish war.”
Hitler and his associates pointed to an allegedly real political subject, “interna-
tional Jewry” which was the power behind the scenes, the driving force and the
glue of the Allied coalition. The history of World War II and that of the Holocaust
did not only demonstrate a contingent coincidence of timing, geography and
opportunity. Rather, in the minds of the Nazi leadership, there was an inherent
connection between the two.¹⁰
Third, the projection and paranoia that connected radical antisemitism
led to repeated and publicly expressed threats to murder the Jews of Europe. In
speeches and writings reported in the national and world press, Hitler and his
associates were clear and blunt, not secretive and euphemistic, about their inten-
tion to “exterminate” and “annihilate” the “Jewish race in Europe.” To be sure,
euphemisms such as the “Final Solution,” and bureaucratic abstractions played

8 On the importance of biological racism for the Nazi euthanasia program, see Henry
Friedländer, The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (Chapel Hill,
N.C., 1995). Friedlander demonstrates the importance of the personnel used in the euthanasia
program for subsequent mass murder by gas in the death camps. However horrifying, the
ideological justification for these murders was distinct from the one that was central to the
Final Solution.
9 Lucy Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945 (New York, 1975).
10 For the full argument, see Herf, The Jewish Enemy; Richard Breitman, The Architect of
Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (New York, 1991); Christopher Browning, The Path to
Genocide (New York, 2000); idem, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish
Policy, September 1939–March 1942 (Lincoln, Neb. and Jerusalem, 2004); Saul Friedländer, The
Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939–1945 (New York, 2007); and Gerhard
Weinberg, Germany, Hitler and World War II (New York, 1995).
 Broadcasting Antisemitism to the Middle East 217

a role. Yet the public language of the Nazi regime was often quite frank. When
Hitler, Goebbels, and other officials threatened to, and then boasted of extermi-
nating the Jews, they meant exactly what they said. At the time, too many of their
adversaries assumed that such statements were “mere propaganda” and bombast
but not a guide to policy. On numerous occasions, Hitler and other leading offi-
cials publicly threatened to murder the Jews and then subsequently announced
that they were in the process of carrying out those threats. They presented this
ongoing policy of “extermination” and “annihilation” as an act of retaliation
against a war of extermination which, they claimed, “the Jewish enemy” had
launched against Germany and the Germans. The Final Solution was, in their
view, an act of fully justified retaliation. Throughout World War II and the Holo-
caust, the paranoia and projection inherent in this view remained handmaidens
of Nazi aggression and mass murder. As the Second World War continued and
the toll of death and destruction on Germany’s armed forces and civilians on the
home front grew, the Nazi antisemitic narrative focused rage and hatred among
the Germans that were partly the byproducts of the war the Allies were waging
against the Third Reich and the supposed actual decision maker—international
Jewry. Hitler implemented and continued the Final Solution in a spirit of self-righ-
teous indignation which placed this most extraordinary of events into an ordi-
nary sequence of attack and retaliation in war. Denial of the uniqueness of the
Holocaust was one of its constitutive elements. As a result of this narrative, it was
to be expected that as the fortunes of war turned against Germany, hatred of Jews
persisted in Germany up to the end the war.
Hitler established the core narrative of the war in his infamous “prophecy”
first uttered on 30 January 1939. In that speech to the Reichstag, he publicly
threatened to “exterminate” all the Jews of Europe in the event that “international
finance Jewry inside and outside Europe,” provoked the world war, in fact, the
very same war which he at that moment was planning to unleash.¹¹ He publicly
repeated the genocidal prophecy on at least seven different occasions between 30
January 1939 and 24 February 1943.¹² As if to underscore the link in his own mind
between the war and his policies toward the Jews, he erroneously dated the first

11 Max Domarus, ed., Hitler: Reden und Proklamation, 1932–1945, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden, 1972),
1058.
12 For the text of the 30 January 1939 speech and the repetitions and variations of the
prophecy on 30 January 1941, 30 January 1942, 15 February 1942, 30 September 1942, 8
November 1942, and 24 February 1943, see Domarus, Hitler: Reden und Proklamationen, 2:
1058, 1663–1664, 1843, 1920, 1937, 1992.
218 Jeffrey Herf

utterance of the prophecy as 1 September 1939, the day he ordered the invasion of
Poland. On 30 January 1941, he said

not to be forgotten is the comment I already made on September 1, 1939 in the Reichstag
that if the world were to be pushed by Jewry into a general war, the role of the whole of
Jewry in Europe would be finished.... Today, they [the Jews] may still be laughing about [that
statement] just as they laughed earlier about my prophecies. Now our racial knowledge is
spreading from people to people. I hope that those who still are our antagonists will one day
recognize the greater domestic enemy and will then make common front with us: against
the international Jewish exploitation and corruption of nations!¹³

The speech was published in the German and the world press.
The following day, the editors of the New York Times wrote that

inside Germany or outside, no one in the world expects truth from Adolf Hitler...there is not
a single precedent to prove he will either keep a promise or fulfill a threat. If there is any
guarantee in his record, in fact, it is that the one thing he will not do is the thing he says he
will do.... Nobody expects consistency from Hitler....¹⁴

Hitler was consistent in ways that The Times editors and many other observers
did not expect. The history of the connection between Nazi propaganda and its
policy and what the German historian Karl Bracher called the underestimation of
Hitler by his contemporaries calls for a still uncompleted transformation of the
meaning of political sophistication and insight in the face of totalitarian ideology.
In his “Political Testament” written in the Berlin bunker on 29 April 1945,
Hitler blamed the Jews for World War II.¹⁵ He had

left no one in doubt that this time millions of adult men would not die and hundreds of
thousands of women and children burn in the cities and die under bombardment without
the really guilty party having to pay for his guilt, albeit with more humane means.¹⁶

13 Ibid., 30 January 1941, pp. 1663–1664; also see “30.1.1941 Adolf Hitler: Kundgebung im
Berliner Sportpalast zum 8. Jahrestag der nationalsozialistischen Machtergreifung,” in Roller
and Höschel, eds. Judenverfolgung und jüdisches Leben... 165–66. These paragraphs were
featured on the front page of Die Judenfrage, then published by the office of Antisemitischen
Aktion. See “Der Führer sprach; Aus den Rede im Sportpalast vom 30 Januar 1941,” Die
Judenfrage 5, no. 2 (10 Feb. 1941): 1.
14 “When Hitler Threatens,” New York Times, 31 Jan. 1941, 18.
15 See the classic account in H. R. Trevor-Roper, The Last Days of Hitler (New York, 1962), 225–
65; and Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1936–1945, Nemesis (New York, 2000), 820–28.
16 Domarus, Hitler; Reden und Proklamation, 2: 2236–2237.
 Broadcasting Antisemitism to the Middle East 219

To the end, he persisted in the paranoid logic of innocence, irresponsibility and

projection. The logical conclusion of Hitler’s illogic was that while he was able to
murder millions of Jews in Europe, international Jewry, in the form of the anti-Hit-
ler coalition, had won the Second World War. Hitler’s last will has sometimes been
interpreted as evidence of his descent into madness under the impact of impend-
ing total defeat. Yet what is most striking about it against the background of Nazi
propaganda is that it simply restated what he had been saying publicly since the
beginning of the war. The paranoid vision of an international Jewish conspiracy
waging aggressive and genocidal war against an innocent Nazi Germany that
flowed from Hitler’s pen on 29 April 1945 had been the core element of the text
and imagery of the Nazi regime’s antisemitic propaganda from the beginning to
the end of the Second World War and the Holocaust. When the Allied powers
defeated the Third Reich—and then when the state of Israel was founded—unre-
constructed Nazis found further evidence of the victory of powerful international
Jewry. In Arabic and Persian, in the themes of Islam, Arab nationalism, and
anti-colonialism, Nazi propaganda adapted this conspiracy theory to the local
circumstances of the Middle East. Its ideological assault on Zionism was central
to this effort, which entailed both trying to win the war against Britain and the
United States in North Africa as well as seeking to extend the Final Solution of
the Jewish Question in Europe to encompass the Jews living in the Middle East as
well.
Before the Nazis could appeal to Arabs, Persians, and Muslims in general,
they needed to clarify if their “antisemitism” extended to the non-Jewish
“Semites” of the Arab, Persian, and Muslim world. In Mein Kampf, Hitler thought
it did. He spoke with disdain about hopes for “any mythical uprising in Egypt”
or the idea that “that now perhaps others are ready to shed their blood for us.”
English machine guns and fragmentation bombs would bring such a Holy War “to
an infernal end.” It was, he continued,

impossible to overwhelm with a coalition of cripples a powerful state that is determined to

stake, if necessary, its last drop of blood for its existence. As a völkisch man, who appraises
the value of men on a racial basis, I am prevented by mere knowledge of the racial inferior-
ity of these so-called “oppressed nations” from linking the destiny of my own people with
theirs.¹⁷

Hitler’s famous book gave antisemitism a broad meaning, one that applied first
and foremost to the Jews, but that also encompassed non-Jewish “Semites” such
as Arabs and Muslims.

17 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, trans. Ralph Mannheim (Boston, 1943, 1971), 658–59.
220 Jeffrey Herf

Disputes surrounding the Berlin Olympics of 1936 alerted German diplomats

that Hitler’s broad view of antisemitism posed a problem for effective propaganda
aimed at Arabs, Persians, and Muslims. A narrower conception was called for—
one that made clear how focused Nazi racial policy was on the Jews. The belief
that the Nuremberg race laws in 1935 discriminated against “non-Aryans” caused
consternation in Egypt. The coach of Egypt’s Olympic team threatened to boycott
the Berlin Olympics in 1936. As they were non-Aryans, he asked, why should
Egyptian athletes travel to a country that regarded them as racially inferior? In a
series of meetings in 1936 and 1937, high ranking officials in the German Foreign
Ministry, the Propaganda Ministry, the Nazi Party’s Office of Racial Politics (Ras-
senpolitisches Amt) and Himmler’s Reich Security Main Office (SS) devoted many
hours to reach the conclusion that Nazi racial legislation distinguished between
Germans and Jews, not Aryans and non-Aryans.¹⁸ Arabs, Persians, and Muslims
were simply different, not inferior. The Foreign Ministry devoted considerable
effort before and during World War II to convince Arabs, Persians (Iranians) and
Muslims in general that its anti-Jewish policies were not based on a biological
racism directed at “non-Aryans” as a whole. It was only the Jews who were the
common “enemy” of Nazi Germany and the Arab and Islamic Middle East. In the
diffusion of Nazi antisemitism to the Arab and Muslim Middle East, a political
accusation wrapped in a conspiracy theory superseded an antisemitism based on
racial biology. Nazi propagandists appealed to them as allies in a common cause,
the fight against the Jews.
Short wave radio became the regime’s most important means spreading its
views, both in occupied Europe and around the world. In October 1939, Nazi
Germany was broadcasting fifteen hours of air time in 113 daily broadcasts. The
number of hours on air increased to twenty-two by January 1940, thirty-one by
the summer of 1940, and fifty-three by 1943 in 147 different broadcasts.¹⁹ Broad-
casts were in Arabic, Afrikkans, Portuguese, Bulgarian, Dutch, English, French,
Hungarian, Italian, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, and Turkish. During
the first year of the World War II, the Germans made 89,500 foreign language
broadcasts that took up 30,500 hours of radio time. By the end of 1940, about
500 people were working in the offices of German radio aimed abroad.²⁰ By 1943,

18 On these discussions see “Zugehöigkeit der Ägypter, Iraker, Iraner, Perser und Türken zur
arischen Rasse, Bd. 1, 1935–1936,” Politisches Archive des Auswärtiges Amt (Berlin) R99173.
19 Werner Schwipps, “Vorwart,” in Wortschlacht im Äther: Die deutsche Auslandsrundfunk im
Zweiten Weltkrieg, ed. Werner Schipps (Berlin, 1971), 9; and Gerhart Goebel, “Fernkampfwaffen
im Rundfunkkrieg,” in ibid.
20 Werner Schipps, “Die deutsche Auslandsrundfunk im Zweiten Weltkrieg” in Wortschlacht
im Äther, 16.
 Broadcasting Antisemitism to the Middle East 221

the Nazi regime had sixteen stations with programing in thirteen different lan-
guages every day.²¹ Prominent exile politicians, such as Subhas Chandra Bose
from India, Rashid Ali al Khilani from Iraq, and Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand
Mufti of Jerusalem, spoke frequently on these stations.²²
Within the Foreign Office Political Division, the Orient Office, Division VII,
oversaw propaganda and political strategy towards Egypt, Afghanistan, Saudi
Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, India, Iran, Sudan, and Ceylon.²³ An Office for
Political Radio (Rundfunkpolitischen Abteilung) existed within the Foreign Office
Political Division.²⁴ By 1 September 1943, its staff included 226 employees.²⁵ Kurt
Kiesinger (subsequently Chancellor of the Federal Republic between 1966 and
1969), worked in the office and was its director from 1943 to 1945.²⁶ The staff
of Division VII wrote and discussed German texts for broadcasts primarily in
Arabic, but also in Persian or Hindi intended for audiences in North Africa, the
Arab world (from Egypt to Iraq), Turkey, Iran, and India. It met regularly with
the Foreign Office Arab Committee, which included experts on the region and
officials responsible for contact with prominent Arab exiles such as Husseini and
Khilani.²⁷ Among the various divisions of the Foreign Office working on foreign
language broadcasts, only the Russia division with a staff of fifty-one broadcast-
ing to the enormous Eastern Front was larger. By 1942, the Orient Division was
larger than the offices broadcasting to Western Europe, England, Ireland, Spain,
Portugal, Italy, Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe, Northern Europe, the Far
East, the United States, and Africa).²⁸ The director of Division VII throughout the

21 Ibid., 25.
22 Ibid., 58.
23 “Auswärtiges Amt, Politische Abteilung,” PAdAA R67478 Referat RüPers, RüHS,Bd. 3:
Haushalt, Personal (Handakte Bartsch), 1939–1943, Bd. 3–4.
24 “Haushaltsvoranschlag der Rundfunkpolitische Abteilung des Auswärtigen Amtes vom
1.4.1942 bis 31.3.1943, PAdAA Rundfunkpolitische Abteilung, R67477 Referate Ru Pers. Ru Hs,
Bd. 1: Verwaltung Organisation 1941–1943, Bde 2–3.
25 “Anlage 1: Zahlenmäßige Übersicht über den Inlandspersonalbestand der Abteilung Ru.,
Stand vom 1.9.1942,” PAdAA Rundfunkpolitische Abteilung, R67477 Referate Ru Pers. Ru Hs,
Bd. 1: Verwaltung Organisation 1941–1943, Bde 2–3.
26 “Personalbestand der Rundfunkpolitische Abteilung (Berlin, August 14, 1943), PAdAA
Rundfunkpolitische Abteilung, R67476 Referate Ru Pers. Ru Hs, Bd. 1: Verwaltung Organisation
1939–1945, Bde 1–2.
27 “Übersicht über die Arbeitsgebiete der Rundfunkpolitischen Abteilung und ihrer Referate,
Anlage 6,” PAdAA Rundfunkpolitische Abteilung, R67477 Referate Ru Pers. Ru Hs, Bd. 1:
Verwaltung Organisation 1941–1943, Bde 2–3.
28 “Abteilung Ru, Anlage 1a,” R67477 Referate Ru Pers. Ru Hs, Bd. 1: Verwaltung Organisation
1941–1943, Bde 2–3; “Anlage 1a, Abteilung Ru, Zahlenmäßige Übersicht über den
222 Jeffrey Herf

war was Kurt Munzel, a diplomat and Orientalist who had worked in the Dresd-
ner Bank in Cairo in the decade before the war.²⁹ By 1942, he led a staff of nine-
teen including (judging from the names) seven native Arabic speakers, and four
“scholarly assistants,” that is, Germans with knowledge of Arabic and Islam.
Broadcasts were beamed to Egypt, Afghanistan, Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Cyprus, Pal-
estine, Turkey, India, Iran, Sudan, and Ceylon. The office also published Barid
as-Sarq (Orient Post) an Arabic language magazine, and worked closely with the
Arab Committee in the Foreign Office.³⁰
From September 1939 to the the fall of 1941, the Arabic broadcasts drew on
the expertise of German Orientalists with a knowledge of Arabic and Islamic
literature and poetry, together with former diplomats of the prewar years with
local knowledge, and an uncertain contribution by pro-Axis Arabs living in Berlin
when the war began. Most of these broadcasts had the tone of a sympathetic,
well-informed, politically engaged scholar, one eager to please yet not quite
able to pick up the ins and outs of local politics. Yet the early broadcasts did
send a clear message that the Nazi regime, rather than celebrate the superior-
ity of Aryans over inferior Middle Eastern “Semites,” was a friend to both Arab
nationalists and Muslims. Of the approximately 2,000 days of radio broadcasting
from Nazi Germany, those of December 1940 to February 1941 are the only ones
for which there is extensive documentation in the German archives. As the texts
indicate that Munzel wrote or co-wrote them, I will refer to the following as the
“Munzel broadcasts.”

Inlandspersonalbestand der Abteilung Ru., Stand vom 1.9.1942,” PAdAA Rundfunkpolitische

Abteilung, R67477 Referate Ru Pers. Ru Hs, Bd. 1: Verwaltung Organisation 1941–1943, Bde
2–3.
29 Ibid. In 1948, Munzel completed a doctoral dissertation at the University of Erlangen. He
returned to service in the West German Foreign Office in the 1950s. See Ludmila Hanisch, Die
Nachfolger der Exegeten: Deutschsprachige Erforschung des Vorderen Orients in der ersten
Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden, 2003), 199.
30 Übersicht über die Arbeitsgebiete der rundfunkpolitischen Abteilung und ihrer Referate,
Ref. VII Orient,” p. 4; “Rundfunkabteilung Inland, Personalstand 1.9.1942, Referat VII Orient,”
p. 16, PAdAA Rundfunkpolitische Abteilung, R67477 Referate Ru Pers. Ru Hs, Bd. 1: Verwaltung
Organisation 1941–1943, Bde 2–3. Personnel of the Orient office in the Foreign Ministry’s
Rundfunkpolitischen Abteilung. Kissling became a Dozent for history and culture of the Orient
and of Turkey at the University of Munich. See, among others, his The Muslim World (1969),
Handbuch der Orientalistik (1959), Islamistische Abhandlungen (1974). Also see Kurt Munzel,
Ägyptischer-arabischer Sprachführer (Wiesbaden, 1958 and 1983).
 Broadcasting Antisemitism to the Middle East 223

On 3 December 1940, Munzel’s Orient Office VII broadcast “a paper about the
English occupation of Egypt.”³¹ With the incantation “Oh Mohammedaner!” (Oh
Muslims!), the broadcast made a direct appeal to Muslims and not only to Arab
nationalists opposed to British rule in Egypt. It did so in the repetitive incanta-
tions of a religious sermon that evoked the authority of the Holy Qur’an and past
days of piety.

Oh, God’s servants! Above all of the other commandments, none is more important to the
Muslims (Mohammedaner) than piety for piety is the core of all virtues and the bond of all
honorable human characteristics. Muslims you are now backward because you have not
shown God the proper piety and do not fear him. You do things that are not commanded
and you leave to the side things that are. God’s word has proven to be true and you are
now the humiliated ones in your own country. This has come about because you don’t have
the piety and fear of God as your pious forefathers did. Of them, one can say that they
“are strong against the unbelievers and merciful amongst themselves.” Oh Muslims! (Oh
Mohammedaner!) Direct your gaze to the holy Koran and the tradition of the prophets. Then
you will see that Islamic law is driven by piety toward God and fear of his punishment. The
Koran inscribed piety as above all other commandments. Read, for example, the words:
“Oh, believers, be pious and do not die without being a Muslim. Stand by God and don’t
be divided.”
Oh Muslims! I call you to piety towards God because it is an inexhaustible source and
a sharp weapon. It offers the good and prevents evil. In short, it is Islam, that is, surrender
to God! Oh Muslims, you’ve seen how God placed piety at the top of all the commandments
and how God has rewarded the pious with victory and success, how he helps him in every
situation....

There was some debate in the German Foreign Ministry about the extent to which
the Nazi regime should make explicit Islamist appeals. Some officials preferred
to direct appeals to secular nationalists. Yet the broadcasts and inner-office
memos indicated that during the course of the war, the Nazi hardliners around
Himmler in the SS, the Foreign Office, and the Propaganda Ministry, as well as
Hitler himself perceived an elective affinity between Nazi ideology and policy
and that of a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam. Nazi broadcasts repeated
that the values of Islam, such as piety, obedience, community, unity rather than
skepticism, individualism and division were similar to those of Nazi Germany.
That such a melange of assault on modern political values was conveyed via the
most modern means of electronic communication in 1940 was another example

31 Kult.R.Ref. VIII (VII) (Orient) Mn/P/B Kultureller Talk vom 3. Dezember 1940, “Ein Blatt über
die Besetzung der Englander in Ägypten,” Berlin (3 December 1940), BAB R901 Auswärtiges
Amt, R73039 Rundfunkabteilung, Ref. VIII Arabische und Iranische Sendungen, vorl. 39, Dez.
1940–Jan. 1941, 2.
224 Jeffrey Herf

of what I have previously called the “reactionary modernist” character of aspects

of Nazi ideology and policy.³² This and other broadcasts conveyed the message
that a revival of fundamentalist Islam was a parallel project to National Social-
ism’s political and ideological revolt against Western political modernity. The
message of this broadcast was that a return to a literal reading of the Qur’an and
its application to contemporary events was not only or primarily a relic of a back-
ward culture but part of the great movement now in power in Nazi Germany and
Fascist Italy.
This and the host of broadcasts that followed offered evidence that National
Socialism was appealing to Muslims as Muslims, not only to Arabs in their strug-
gle against the British. While Nazi propaganda in Germany was claiming that a
regrettable elective affinity existed between English Puritanism and the Jews, it
also postulated a welcome affinity between National Socialist ideology and what
it selected from the traditions of Islam.³³ On 12 December 1940, for example,
German radio announced that Islam “is a religion of the community, not a religion
of the individual. It is thus a religion of the common welfare (Gemeinnutzes) and
not of self-interest (Eigennutzes). Islam therefore is a just and true nationalism for
it calls on the Muslim to place the general interest ahead of private interests, to
live not for himself but for his religion and his fatherland. This is the most import-
ant goal that Islam follows. It is at the basis of its prayers and commandments.”³⁴
The priority of “the common welfare” over self-interest was a continuing and key
theme of the Nazi Party before 1933 and the Nazi regime afterwards.
It was hoped that the appeals to Islamic themes in these broadcasts would
establish a willingness among Muslims to listen to Nazism’s secular political mes-
sages as well. On the same day that Radio Berlin broadcast the above message,
it also sent out “A Government Statement for the Arabs”³⁵ From the same station
in the same hour, perhaps with the same announcer, Nazi radio moved from the

32 Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism: Technology, Culture and Politics in Weimar and the
Third Reich (New York, 1984).
33 On the elective affinity asserted by Nazi propagandists between English Puritanism and the
Jews, see Jeffrey Herf, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Jews
(Cambridge, Mass., 2006), 71–74.
34 Bundesarchiv Berlin, [Lichterfelde] (BAB) R901 Auswärtiges Amt, R73039
Rundfunkabteilung, Ref. VIII Arabische und Iranische Sendungen, vorl. 39, Dez. 1940–Jan. 1941,
Kult.R, Ref. VIII (Orient), Mu/Scha “Religiöser Wochentalk vom 12. Dez.1940 (arabisch) Die
Friegebigkeit,” broadcast on 12 Dec. 1940, 14–16.
35 “Zur Regierungserklärung für die Araber,” Talk vom 12. Dezember 1940 (arabisch),
BAB) R901 Auswärtiges Amt, R73039 Rundfunkabteilung, Ref. VIII Arabische und Iranische
Sendungen, vorl. 39, Dez. 1940–Jan. 1941, Kult.R, Ref. VIII (Orient), Mu/Scha, pp. 11–13.
 Broadcasting Antisemitism to the Middle East 225

specifically religious to the clearly secular and political. Listeners heard that
Germany expressed full sympathy for the Arab’s “struggle for freedom and inde-
pendence” so that they could “take their proper place under the sun and recover
glory and honor in the service of humanity and civilization.” The German gov-
ernment’s expression of “love and sympathy” for the Arabs had “found a strong
echo among the German people” while strengthening “the bonds of friendship
with the Arabs which the Germans have cherished for many years.” This connec-
tion was not surprising, the talk continued, because Germans and Arabs shared
“many qualities and virtues,” such as “courage in war...heroism and manly char-
acter.” They

both shared in the suffering and injustices after the end of the [First] World War. Both of
these great peoples had their honor insulted, their rights were denied and trampled under-
foot. Both bled from the same wounds and both also had the same enemy: namely the Allies
who divided them and allowed them no claim to honor. Now Germany has succeeded to get
out from under this disgrace and to regain all of its old rights so that Germany’s voice is now
heard everywhere and has again taken its old place.³⁶

The idea that Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany were “the powerful, young nations”
was a continuing theme of these broadcasts.³⁷ They broadcast combined appeals
to Islamic traditionalism combined with evocations of the values of the Nazi
Volksgemeinschaft and a promise of future Arabic and Islamic revival if Germa-
ny’s example was followed. Yet these early broadcasts lacked a certain political
punch and grasp of local idioms and politics. This changed in November 1941
when pro-Nazi Arab exiles, Haj Amin al-Husseini and Rashid al-Khilani, arrived
in Berlin.³⁸ They both met with Hitler and Ribbentrop and they and their asso-
ciates worked closely with officials in the Nazi Foreign Ministry in its Arab and
Orient committees in the Office of Political Radio to fashion radio and print pro-

36 Ibid.
37 “Die Selbstsuch: Talk vom 16. Januar 1941 (arabisch) broadcast 16 Jan. 1941, BAB, R901
Auswärtiges Amt, R73039 Rundfunkabteilung, Ref. VIII Arabische und Iranische Sendungen,
vorl. 39, Dez. 1940–Jan. 1941, Kult.R, Ref. VIII (Orient), Mu/B., pp. 62–64.
38 On Haj Amin al-Husseini and Rashid Ali el Khilani in Berlin see Zvi Elpeleg, The Grand Mufti:
Haj Amin al-Hussaini, Founder of the Palestinian National Movement, trans. David Harvey
(London, 1993); Klaus Gensicke, Der Mufti von Jerusalem und die Nationalsozialisten: Eine
politische Biographie Amin el-Husseinis (Darmstadt, 2007); Michael Mallmann and Martin
Cuppers, Halbmond und Hakenkreuz: Das Dritte Reich, die Araber und Palästina (Darmstadt,
2006), 105–20; and Lukasz Hirszowicz, The Third Reich and the Arab East (London, 1966),
211–28.
226 Jeffrey Herf

paganda for Arabs and Muslims.³⁹ In his subsequently famous meeting with Hus-
seini in Berlin on 28 November 1941, Hitler heard Husseini lavish praise on him,
express his support for Nazi Germany in the war, and request that Germany and
Italy issue a strong declaration in support of Arab independence from Britain.
Though Hitler replied that the time had not yet arrived for issuing such a declara-
tion, he told Husseini that when the German armies on the Eastern Front reached
“the southern exit” from the Caucasus, Hitler would

give the Arab world the assurance that its hour of liberation had arrived. Germany’s objec-
tive would then be solely the destruction of the Jewish element residing in the Arab sphere
under the protection of British power.⁴⁰

In other words, in the same period in which Hitler had taken the decision to
launch the Final Solution of the Jewish Question in Europe, he also made clear to
Husseini that he intended to extend it as well outside Europe, that is, at least to
the Jews living in Egypt, Palestine, Trans-Jordan, and Iraq. Husseini and Khilani
and the Arabic-language radio writers and speakers accompanying them gave
the Nazi regime an asset it had not had before, namely, native Arab speakers
who could communicate Nazism’s messages in colloquial, fluent, and passion-
ate Arabic. This was an important for carrying out the war against the Jews that
Germany was waging in both senses of that term because it was intended both
to stimulate Arab and Muslim support for the German armed forces fighting in
North Africa as well as incite support for an extension of the Final Solution to the
Jews of the Middle East should the Germans defeat the British and Americans in
North Africa.⁴¹ According to the language of the Genocide Convention adopted by
the United Nations after World War II, many of the resulting broadcasts amounted
to “incitement” and could thus be described as part of the crime of genocide.⁴²

39 On this see Peter Longerich, Propagandisten im Krieg : die Presseabteilung des

Auswärtigen Amtes unter Ribbentrop, (Munich, 1987).
40 “No. 515, Memorandum by an Official of the Foreign Minister’s Secretariat, Record of the
Conversation between the Führer and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem on November 28, 1941, in
the Presence of Reich Foreign Minister and Minster Grobba in Berlin,” Berlin (30 Nov. 1941),
DGFP Series D (1937–1945) Vol. 13: The War Years, June 23–December 11, 1941, pp. 881–82,
884.
41 As Tuvia Friling has pointed out, David Ben Gurion and the political leaders of the Jews in
pre-state Palestine, thought a great deal about the threat of Nazi expansion in the Middle East.
See Tuvia Friling, Arrows in the dark : David Ben-Gurion, the Yishuv Leadership, and Rescue
Attempts during the Holocaust, trans. by Ora Cummings (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 2005).
42 Clause 3 in Article 3 of the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide,” includes “direct and public incitement to commit genocide” as acts that should be
 Broadcasting Antisemitism to the Middle East 227

Alexander Kirk arrived to take up his post as head of the American Legation
in Cairo on 29 March 1941, following his posting as Chargé d’Affaires of the United
States Embassy in Berlin from 1939 to 1940. He came to Cairo with a deep knowl-
edge of and opposition to the Nazi regime, and remained as ambassador until 29
March 1944. Kirk set up one of the more remarkable intelligence operations of
the war devoted to what the Nazis were publicly saying, both to understand them
as well as to learn how to counter their propaganda offensive. He hired a techni-
cal staff and native Arabic speakers. Kirk sent one of the first of his dispatches
about Nazi radio broadcasts in Arabic to the office of Secretary of State Cordell
Hull Washington on 13 September 1941, summarizing the themes of broadcasts
from 18 August through 7 September 1941.⁴³ The regular summaries continued,
expanding in length and detail until April 1942, when Kirk’s staff began to produce
verbatim transcripts in English translation of Nazi Germany’s Arabic-language
radio broadcasts to the Middle East. Kirk sent the texts to Washington every
week until March 1944, and this was continued by his successor, Pickney Tuck,
until spring 1945. In Washington, the Kirk transcripts were circulated in the State
Department, the Office of War Information (which was responsible for American
“political warfare”), the Office of Strategic Services and the Pentagon’s various
military intelligence agencies. As far as I have been able to determine, the result-
ing several thousand pages comprise the most complete record anywhere of Nazi
Germany’s efforts to influence the Arab and Islamic world via its most important
propaganda program of shortwave radio broadcasts.
Kirk’s memos in the spring of 1942 to Secretary of State Cordell Hull under-
scored both the strategic importance of Allied victory in the Middle East for the
outcome of the war as a whole, as well as the need for a greater American mili-
tary commitment in the region in order to prevent a German victory over Britain’s
armed forces in North Africa.⁴⁴ In a despatch of 18 April 1942, Kirk summarized

punishable. See http://www.hrweb.org/legal/genocide.html

43 Alexander Kirk, “Telegram Sent, September 13, 8 p.m., 1941 to Department of State form
Cairo Legation, Number 1361,” pp. 1–3, NARA RG84, Cairo Legation and Embassy, Secret and
Confidential General Records, 1939, 1941–1947, 1941, 820.02-830, Entry 2412, 350/55/6/5, Box
4, Folder 820.02 1941.
44 The Minister in Egypt (Kirk) to the Secretary of State, Cairo (16 Feb. 1942), “Concern of
the United States regarding effect of Axis military advance into Egypt; plans for evacuation
of American diplomatic and consular personnel from Egypt,” Foreign Relations of the United
States, Diplomatic Papers 1942, vol. 4: The Near East and Africa (Washington, D.C.: United
States Government Printing Office, 1962), 71–73.
228 Jeffrey Herf

the broadcasts of the preceding six months.⁴⁵ German propaganda sought to con-
vince the Arabs that the Axis countries had “a natural sympathy with the Arabs
and their great civilization, the only one comparable with the civilization intro-
duced by the New Order into Europe, which is now being suppressed by ‘British
Imperialism,’ ‘Bolshevik barbarity,’ and ‘Jewish greed’ and more recently ‘Amer-
ican materialism.’”
The Arabs could “never be the friends of Britain” because her promises are
false. German Arabic radio denounced the Jews “ad nauseum.” It asserted that
the Jews, “backed by Britain and the U.S.A.” were “the arch-enemies of Islam.”
They controlled American finance and had “forced Roosevelt to purse a policy of
aggression.” Roosevelt and Churchill were “playthings in the hands of the Jewish
fiends who are destroying civilization.”⁴⁶ Throughout World War II, Nazi radio
propaganda linked Britain and the United States in particular to support for the
establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine. Every statement by any public figure
in Britain or the United States expressing anger over the persecution of Jews in
Europe or support for a Jewish state in Palestine was taken as further proof of the
truth that the Jews were in control of the governments of Britain, the United States
but also of “Jewish Bolshevism” in Moscow. As was the case in Nazi propaganda
in Europe, Roosevelt and Churchill were the main culprits and stooges.
In the spring, summer, and fall of 1942, as General Erwin Rommel’s North
Africa Corps advanced to within sixty miles of Alexandria, the broadcasts envis-
aged imminent victory. On 3 July 1942 “Berlin in Arabic” announced that Germany
and Italy resolved that “the troops of the Axis powers are victoriously advancing
into Egyptian territory...to guarantee Egypt’s independence and sovereignty.”
The Axis forces were entering Egypt

to dismiss the British from Egyptian territory...and to liberate the whole of the Near East
from the British yoke. The policy of the Axis powers is inspired by the principle “Egypt for
the Egyptians.” The emancipation of Egypt from the chains which have linked her with
Britain, and her security from the risks of war, will enable her to assume her position among
the independent sovereign states.⁴⁷

45 Alexander Kirk to Secretary of State, “Telegram 340, General Summary of Tendencies in Axis
Broadcasts in Arabic,” Cairo (18 Apr. 1942), NARA, RG659, United States Department of State,
Central Decimal File, 1940–1944, 740.0011/European War 1939, Microfilm Records M982, Roll
114, p. 21414.
46 Ibid., 1–2.
47 “Despatch No. 502 from the American Legation at Cairo, Egypt, Axis Broadcasts in Arabic
for the Period July 3 to 9, 1942, Cairo, July 21, 1942,” NARA, RG 84 Foreign Service Posts of the
Department of State, General Records, Cairo Embassy, 1942, 815.4-820.02, Box 77, p. 1.
 Broadcasting Antisemitism to the Middle East 229

The radio then broadcast the following statement by the Grand Mufti of Palestine,
Haj Amin al-Husseini:

The Glorious victory secured by the Axis troops in North Africa, has encouraged the Arabs
and the whole East, and filled their hearts with admiration for Marshall Rommel’s genius,
and the bravery of the Axis soldiers. This is because the Arabs believe that the Axis Powers
are fighting against the common enemy, namely the British and the Jews, and in order to
remove the danger of communism spreading, following the [Allied, JH] aggression on Iran.
These victories, generally speaking, will have far reaching repercussions on Egypt, because
the loss of the Nile Valley and of the Suez Canal, and the collapse of the British mastery over
the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, will bring nearer the defeat of Britain and the end of
the British Empire.”⁴⁸

The German and Italian declaration was one that Husseini and Khilani had been
seeking ever since they arrived in Rome and Berlin and expressed their support
for the Axis powers. Given that neither Vichy France nor Fascist Italy had gone to
war in order to guarantee independence and sovereignty to the Arabs, Hitler and
Mussolini had postponed making any such statement. Now that an uprising in
Egypt might undermine British armed forces, the dictators agreed to do so.
The Kirk transcripts recorded a steady diet of antisemitic arguments that
echoed the political accusations at the core of Nazi propaganda in Europe. The
Nazis claimed that Britain and the United States had become stooges of the Jews,
that World War II was a Jewish war ,and that Allied victory would mean Jewish
domination of the Middle East. The Americans recorded one of the most remark-
able Nazi broadcasts of the war—“The Voice of Free Arabism”—at 8:15 p.m. Cairo
time on 7 July 1942. It illustrated the links between the general propaganda line in
Europe and its adaptation to the Middle East context. The text is entitled, “KILL
THE JEWS BEFORE THEY KILL YOU”—a statement that equaled that of Hitler and
Goebbels in its antisemitic radicalism. The broadcast began with a lie:

a large number of Jews residing in Egypt and a number of Poles, Greeks, Armenians and
Free French, have been issued with revolvers and ammunition” in order to “help them
against the Egyptians at the last moment, when Britain is forced to evacuate Egypt.⁴⁹

The statement continued:

In the face of this barbaric procedure by the British we think it best, if the life of the Egyptian
nation is to be saved, that the Egyptians rise as one man to kill the Jews before they have a
chance of betraying the Egyptian people. It is the duty of the Egyptians to annihilate the

48 Ibid., 1–2.
49 “KILL THE JEWS BEFORE THEY KILL YOU,” ibid., 13.
230 Jeffrey Herf

Jews and to destroy their property. Egypt can never forget that it is the Jews who are carrying
out Britain’s imperialist policy in the Arab countries and that they are the source of all the
disasters, which have befallen the countries of the East. The Jews aim at extending their
domination throughout the Arab countries, but their future depends on a British victory.
That is why they are trying to save Britain from her fate and why Britain is arming them to
kill the Arabs and save the British Empire.
You must kill the Jews, before they open fire on you. Kill the Jews, who have appro-
priated your wealth and who are plotting against your security. Arabs of Syria, Iraq and
Palestine, what are you waiting for? The Jews are planning to violate your women, to kill
your children and to destroy you. According to the Moslem religion, the defense of your
life is a duty which can only be fulfilled by annihilating the Jews. This is your best oppor-
tunity to get rid of this dirty race, which has usurped your rights and brought misfortune
and destruction on your countries. Kill the Jews, burn their property, destroy their stores,
annihilate these base supporters of British imperialism. Your sole hope of salvation lies in
annihilating the Jews before they annihilate you.⁵⁰

Here, applied to the Arab and Moslem context, was the same logic of projection
and paranoia that was the defining feature of Nazism’s radical antisemitism. It
is impossible to be more blunt. It combined the political accusations of Nazism
with evocation of the religious demands of Islam. A statement such as this was
unusual only in the extent to which it voiced the genocidal threats that were more
implicit in many other assertions about the venality and power of the Jews that
were broadcast on Nazi Arabic-language radio.
In their important recent work, Halbmond und Hakenkruez: Das Dritte Reich,
die Araber und Palästina [Crescent and Swastika: The Third Reich, the Arabs and
the Palestinians], German historians Michael Mallmann and Martin Cuppers
have revealed that German intelligence agents were reporting back to Berlin that
if Rommel’s North Africa Corps was victorious and was able to enter Cairo and
Palestine, it could count on support from some elements of the Egyptian officer
corps as well as from the Moslem Brotherhood. They also discovered that an Ein-
satzgruppe of SS troops in Rome was prepared to depart to Palestine to murder
the Jewish population if Rommel won the battle of Al-Alamein. German officials
expected as much support for that endeavor from the local Arab population as
Ukranians had given to SS units on the Eastern Front.⁵¹ As Hitler indicated to
Husseini at their meeting of 28 November 1941, the fate of both the Allied armies
as well as the Jewish population in the Middle East hung in the balance. The
purpose of the propaganda was both to draw Arabs and Muslims to the side of the

50 Ibid., 13–14.
51 Michael Mallmann and Martin Cuppers, Halbmond und Hakenkreuz: Das Dritte Reich, die
Araber und Palästina (Darmstadt, 2007), especially chs. 7–9.
 Broadcasting Antisemitism to the Middle East 231

Axis as well as to incite them to support Nazi plans to extend the Final Solution
beyond Europe’s geographical limits.
Much work remains to be done on the reception of Nazism in wartime
Cairo and the Middle East. Tantalizing hints of “fifth column” activity in the
Muslim Brotherhood, by students at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Young Egypt,
and some parts of the officer corp are to be found in reports by American and
British diplomats and intelligence agencies. The immediate postwar months and
years produced evidence regarding the very enthusiastic reception of the Grand
Mufti’s message in the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo. In summer 1945, Husseini
fled Germany but was arrested in France. Under suspicious circumstances he
“escaped” French custody and arrived in Cairo. Marshall Tito’s government in
Yugoslavia wanted to put him on trial for war crimes for his role in inspiring and
organizing an SS division of Bosnian Muslims. The Allies were fully aware of his
antisemitic incitement on wartime radio. However, an Office of Strategic Services
report of 23 June 1945 on “The Near East and the War Crimes Problem” revealed
a quite different reaction to these events in the Middle East.⁵² The authors wrote
that “in the Near East the popular attitude toward the trial of [Nazi, JH] war crimi-
nals is one of apathy. As a result of the general Near Eastern feeling of hostility to
the imperialism of certain of the Allied powers, there is a tendency to sympathize
with rather than condemn those who have aided the Axis.”⁵³
The Mufti arrived in Cairo in June 1946. On 11 June, Hassan al-Banna, the
leader of the Muslim Brotherhood sent a statement to officials of the Arab League:

Al-Ikhwan Al-Muslimin [the Moslem Brotherhood] and all Arabs request the Arab League
on which Arab hopes are pinned, to declare that the Mufti is welcome to stay in any Arab
country he may choose and that great welcome should be extended to him wherever he
goes, as a sign of appreciation for his great services for the glory of Islam and the Arabs....
The hearts of the Arabs palpitated with joy at hearing that the Mufti has succeeded in reach-
ing an Arab country. The news sounded like thunder to the ears of some American, British
and Jewish tyrants. The lion is at least free and he will roam the Arabian jungle to clear it of
the wolves.... What a hero, what a miracle of a man. We wish to know what the Arab youth,
Cabinet Ministers, rich men, and princess of Palestine, Syria, Iraq, Tunis, Morocco,, and
Tripoli are going to do to be worthy of this hero. Yes, this hero who challenged an empire
and fought Zionism, with the help of Hitler and Germany. Germany and Hitler are gone, but

52 “‘The Near East and the War Crimes Problem’: Office of Strategic Services, Research and
Analysis Branch, R and A, No. 1090.116, 23 June 1945, Situation Report: Near East, Analysis of
Current Intelligence for the Use of OSS,” pp. 1–28, in NARA, RG84, Foreign Service Posts of the
Department of State, Syria: Damascus Legation, Confidential File, 1945: vols. 1–2, 030-800B,
Classified General Records, Entry 3248A, 350/69/5/6-7, Box 4, vol. 2, 711-800B.
53 Ibid., “Summary.”
232 Jeffrey Herf

Amin Al-Husseini will continue the struggle.... God entrusted him with a mission and he must
succeed.... The Lord Almighty did not preserve Amin for nothing. There must be a divine
purpose behind the preservation of the life of this man, namely the defeat of Zionism. Amin!
March on! God is with you! We are behind you! We are willing to sacrifice our necks for the
cause. To death! Forward March.⁵⁴

Writing the history of radical Islam must entail the history of the interaction of
fascist Italy, Vichy France, and above all, Nazi Germany, with the Moslem funda-
mentalists and radical Arab nationalists of the wartime years. There is much work
to be done on the intellectual, political, and cultural atmosphere of wartime and
postwar Cairo for I think it is plausible that it was then and there and in wartime
Berlin that an important chapter in the history of radical Islam was written. In
1950, Sayid Qutb, the preeminent intellectual of radical Islam of the 1950s and
1960s and a key inspiration to the founders of al-Qaeda, published an essay enti-
tled “Our Struggle with the Jews.” It combined a close reading of the Qu’ran with
reflections on recent history. Ronald Nettler translates a section of that text as
follows:

And the Jews did indeed return to evil-doing, so Allah gave to the Muslims power over them.
The Muslims then expelled them from the whole of the Arabian Peninsula.... Then the Jews
again returned to evil-doing and consequently Allah sent against them others of his ser-
vants, until the modern period. Then Allah brought Hitler to rule over them. And once again
today the Jews have returned to evil-doing, in the form of “Israel” which made the Arabs,
the owners of the Land, taste of sorrows and woe. So let Allah bring down upon the Jews
people who will mete out the worst kind of punishment.⁵⁵

As a historian of Europe and Germany, it is not my place to engage in Qu’ranic

exegesis. However we all know that Qutb introduced an idea that could not possi-
bly be derived from reading that holy book, namely that Hitler was sent by Allah
to rule the Jews. Yet a parallel between Mohammed’s “struggle with the Jews”
and that of Hitler was a theme broached in Nazi broadcasts. We do not know if
Qutb was listening but we do know that he knew al-Banna and was in the Muslim
Brotherhood. There is much work to be done to connect European cultural diffu-
sion to its reception in Cairo and elsewhere in the Middle East. Yet there is much

54 “Hassan Al-Banna and the Mufti of Palestine” in “Contents of Secret Bulletin of Al Ikhwan
al-Muslimin dated 11 June 1946,” Cairo (July 23, 1946). NARA RG 226 (Office of Strategic
Services) Washington Registry SI Intelligence, Field Files, Entry 108A, 190/16/28/3-7, Box 15,
Folder 2.
55 Sayid Qutb, “Our Struggle with the Jews,” translated by Ronald Nettler in Ronald L. Nettler,
Past Trials and Present Tribulations: A Muslim Fundamentalist’s View of the Jews (Oxford, 1987),
86–87.
 Broadcasting Antisemitism to the Middle East 233

evidence now to suggest that the diffusion of Nazi ideology to the Middle East
during World War II was one important chapter in the history of the radical Islam
that reached full bloom only many decades later.

Conclusion

Though Nazi Germany failed in its military and propaganda offensives in the
Middle East, the conspiracy theories stemming from European radical antisem-
itism, including the Arabic translations of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
persisted after the war, in particular in the ideologies of radical Islam. In both
Europe and in the Middle East, radical antisemitic ideology interpreted World
War II as a war fought between international Jewry and the Axis powers. Notwith-
standing the Holocaust, in the view of adherents of this ideology, “international
Jewry” in the form of the Allied coalition won that war. The defeat of Fascist Italy
and Nazi Germany, and the subsequent full revelation of the extent of the crimes
of the Third Reich, discredited Nazism, fascism, and antisemitism in post-1945
Europe. Yet the evidence at our disposal points to the persistence and deepen-
ing of antisemitism in the Middle East before the founding of the State of Israel
in 1948. As I noted at the outset, the Nazi leaders viewed the existence of the
anti-Hitler coalition between the Soviet Union and the Western democracies as
powerful evidence that an international Jewish conspiracy was, as Joseph Goeb-
bels put it, the “glue” of Allied coalition. In the Middle East, the foundation of
Israel, its recognition by the Soviet Union and the United States, followed by the
surprising success of the Jews in the war of 1948 all contributed to a distinct Arab
and Muslim variant of the conspiracy theories of European antisemitism: Israel
was founded and the Jews won the war of 1948 because of the vast international
power of the Jews. The success of the Zionist project was attributed to the same
vast power that had brought about Allied victory in the war and then Arab defeat
in 1948.
The conjuncture between radical Islam and National Socialism in wartime
Berlin and its impact on the Arab, Persian,and Muslim societies of the Middle
East should be the subject of future research and debate among historians. In
wartime Berlin, a meeting of the minds, not a clash of civilizations, took place
between radical Islamists and National Socialists as a result of which a connec-
tion emerged between two quite different traditions of antipathy to the Jews. Just
as Nazism was not strictly a eurocentric story, so the history of radical Islam turns
234 Jeffrey Herf

out to have an important European component.⁵⁶ In post-1945 Europe, radical

antisemitism, on the whole, ceased to be a major factor in mainstream politics.
The conjuncture of National Socialism and militant Islam in wartime Berlin and
its diffusion via radio to the Middle East in World War II contributed to the per-
sistence of the longest hatred with new vigor and with a blend of old and new,
European, Arab and Muslim tones.

56 On this point see Paul Berman, Terror and Liberalism (New York, 2003); Mathias Kuentzel,
Jihad and Jew Hatred: Nazism, Islamism and the Roots of 9/11 (New York, 2007); and Bernard
Lewis, Semites and Anti-Semites: An Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice (New York, 1986, 1999);
Robert S. Wistrich, Muslim Antisemitism: A Clear and Present Danger (New York: American
Jewish Committee, 2002).
Matthias Küntzel
Judeophobia and the Denial of the Holocaust
in Iran¹
Never before has a head of state called into question the reality of the Holocaust so
vociferously as the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A provisional high
point in his campaign was reached with the conference “Review of the Holocaust:
Global Vision,” hosted by the Iranian regime on 11–12 December 2006 in Teheran.
More than sixty participants from thirty different countries included the former
Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, the nutty followers of the Jewish Neturei Karta
sect, officials of Germany’s neo-Nazi German National Party (NPD), as well as
the usual crowd of Holocaust deniers. Fredrick Toben delivered a lecture entitled
“The Holocaust—A Murder Weapon,” Robert Faurisson referred to the Shoah as a
“fairy tale,” while his colleague Veronika Clarke from the United States explained
that “the Jews made money in Auschwitz.” A certain Professor McNalley declared
that regarding the Holocaust as a fact is as ludicrous as believing in “magicians
and witches,” while the Belgian Leonardo Clerici offered the following explana-
tion in his capacity as a Muslim: “I believe that the value of metaphysics is greater
than the value of history.”²
Had such a gathering taken place in a pub somewhere in Melbourne, hardly
anyone would have paid any attention. The gathering took on historical signifi-
cance only because it happened by invitation and on the premises of the Iranian
foreign ministry: hosted by the government of a country that disposes of the
world’s largest oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and the largest natural gas reserves
after Russia. In this setting, even the most delusional phantasms did not provoke
laughter, but attentive nodding and applause. On the walls, there hung photos
of corpses with the caption “myth,” as well as photos of laughing concentration
camp survivors with the caption “truth.”

1 This article was translated from German by John Rosenthal.

2 These quotes are taken from the most comprehensive documentation of the conference
to date, translated (into German) and published by the Iran research section of Honestly-
Concerned.org, 14 Dec. 2006 under the title “Die staatlich organisierte Teheraner
Hasspropagandakonferenz…” http://www.honestlyconcerned.info/bin/articles.
cgi?ID=IR4306&Category=ir&Subcategory=19 . Interview with the conservative Iranian website
“Baztab,” 27 Dec. 2006 (www.baztab/ir/news/56550.php). Cited from the (German) translation
of the Iran Research Section of Honestly Concerned: “Interview mit Mohammad Ali Ramin,” 7
Jan. 2007.
236 Matthias Küntzel

The Teheran deniers conference marked a turning point because for the
first time the leadership of a large and important state put Holocaust denial at
the center of its foreign policy agenda. The founding conception of the United
Nations, created in the 1940s as a response to the massacres of the Second World
War, has never been challenged in a more provocative fashion. It is clear that
this was precisely the point of the exercise for the Iranian elites. Mohammed Ali
Ramin, one of Ahmadinejad’s closest advisors who was charged with the prepa-
ration of the Holocaust conference, compared this “second historical conference,
that took place in Tehran” with the famous Tehran Conference of the World War
II Allied Powers in 1943. Just like the first Tehran Conference, so too the second
would “change the face of the world,” he enthused.
But the Tehran deniers conference marks a turning point not only because
of its state sponsorship, but also because of its purpose. Up until now, Holo-
caust deniers wanted to revise the past. Today, Iran wants to shape the future:
to prepare the next Holocaust. In his opening speech to the conference, Iranian
Foreign Minister Manucher Mottaki left no doubt that the aim was the destruction
of Israel: if “the official version of the Holocaust is called into question,” Mottaki
said, then “the nature and identity of Israel” must also be called into question.³
By denying the particularity of the Nazi persecution of the Jews, a central motive
for the establishment of the State of Israel gets debased. Consideration of Aus-
chwitz is de-legitimized in order to legitimize a second anti-Jewish genocide. If,
however, the Holocaust did occur after all, then—per Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric—
Israel has even less of a reason to be in Palestine, but should be transplanted
instead to Europe. One way or another, the result is the same: Israel must vanish.
This was the sole reason for Iran attaching so much importance to the partic-
ipation of the delegation from the Jewish Neturei Karta sect: i.e., because while
Neturei Karta does not deny the Holocaust, it welcomes the destruction of Israel.
This objective was the common denominator uniting all the participants in the
conference. In his closing speech, Ahmadinejad formulated his aim with unmis-
takable clarity:

The life-curve of the Zionist regime has begun its descent, and it is now on a downward
slope towards its fall.… The Zionist regime will be wiped out, and humanity will be liber-
ated.⁴

3 Boris Kalnoky, “Iran versammelt die Holocaust-Leugner,” Die Welt, 12 Dec. 2006.
4 Yigal Carmon, “The Role of Holocaust Denial in the Ideology and Strategy of the Iranian
Regime,” Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) Inquiry and Analysis Series, no. 307, 15
Dec. 2006.
 Judeophobia and the Denial of the Holocaust in Iran 237

Holocaust Denial and the Nuclear Program

Just as Hitler sought to “liberate” humanity by murdering the Jews, so Ahmadine-
jad believes that he can “liberate” humanity through the violent eradication of
Israel. The deniers conference as an instrument for propagating this project was
intimately linked to the nuclear program as an instrument for realizing it.
The nuclear program is already being celebrated in Iran as otherwise only
the 12th Imam has been celebrated before: as a sort of divine apparition that will
drive all injustice from the earth. Thus, in April 2006, in a cult-like ceremony,
Ahmadinejad unveiled two metal containers in which were to be found Iran’s first
independently enriched uranium. Choirs thundered “Allahu Akbar” as exotically
clad dancers whirled ecstatically around the containers and lifted them hero-
ically toward the sky in the style of Maoist opera.
Five years before, in December 2001, the former Iranian President Hashemi
Rafsanjani first boasted that “the use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel
will destroy everything,” whereas the damage to the Islamic world of a potential
nuclear retaliatory attack could be limited. “It is not irrational to contemplate
such an eventuality,” he said.⁵ While the Islamic world could sacrifice hundreds
of thousands of “martyrs” in an Israeli riposte without disappearing — thus the
logic of Rafsanjani’s calculation — Israel would be relegated to history after the
first bomb. It is precisely this suicidal mentality that distinguishes the Iranian
nuclear weapons program from the programs of all other countries and that
makes it particularly dangerous.
The ideology of martyrdom is the most important heritage that the Ayatol-
lah Khomeini bequeathed to his successors. Life was always regarded by him as
valueless and death as the beginning of true life. “The natural world,” Khomeini
explained in October 1980, “is the lowest element, the scum of creation.” What
is decisive is the beyond: the “divine world that is eternal.”⁶ This latter world
is accessible to martyrs. Their death is no death, but merely the transition from
this world to the world beyond, where they will live on eternally and in splendor.
Whether the warrior wins the battle or loses it and dies a martyr, in both cases, his
victory is assured: either a mundane victory or a spiritual one.
It is only against the background of these theological convictions that we can
comprehend the readiness of Khomeini and some of his followers even to sacri-

5 Quoted in MEMRI Special Dispatch Series, no. 324, 3 Jan. 2002.

6 Cited in Daniel Brumberg, “Khomeini’s Legacy: Islamic Rule and Islamic Social Justice,” in
Spokesmen for the Despised: Fundamental Leaders of the Middle East, ed. R. Scott Appleby
(Chicago, 1997), 56.
238 Matthias Küntzel

fice Iran itself, if necessary, in order to wipe out Israel. In 1980, Khomeini himself
summed up this mentality as follows: “We do not worship Iran, we worship Allah.
For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say
let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the
world.”⁷
Whereas the majority of Iranians and even a large part of the clerical elite
would presumably reject such a scenario, the radical Islamist camp appears pre-
cisely to be preparing for it. A recent statement by Mohammad Hassan Rahimian,
representative of the Iranian revolutionary guide Ali Khamenei, made this unmis-
takably clear. On 16 November 2006, Rahimian explained:

The Jew”—not the Zionist, but the Jew!—“is the most obstinate enemy of the devout. And
the main war will determine the destiny of mankind…. The reappearance of the twelfth
Imam will lead to a war between Israel and the Shia.⁸

Iran, the first country to make Holocaust denial a matter of foreign policy, is like-
wise the first openly to threaten another UN member state with annihilation. In
light of this objective, however, why would those in power in Tehran call into
doubt Hitler’s Holocaust, rather than praising it? After all, in the Arab world,
where Ahmadinejad’s campaign has enjoyed the most enthusiastic reception,
Hitler is admired and he is admired not for building highways or conquering
Paris, but precisely for murdering Jews. Why should Holocaust denial be most
widespread in a region where admiration for Hitler remains to this day common-
place? How do Holocaust denial and admiration for Hitler go together? The key to
the resolution of this paradox is to be found in the peculiarities of the antisemitic
mind-set.

“Brother Hitler,” “Eichmann, the Martyr”

Holocaust denial is an extreme form of antisemitism. Whoever declares Aus-
chwitz to be a “myth” implicitly portrays the Jews as the enemy of humankind,
who for filthy lucre has been duping the rest of humanity for the past sixty years.
Whoever talks of the “so-called” Holocaust suggests that over ninety percent

7 From A Selection of the Imam’s Speeches, vol. 3 (Tehran 1981), 109; quoted in Amir Taheri,
Nest of Spies: America’s Journey to Disaster in Iran (London, 1988), 269.
8 ISNA, 16 Nov. 2006, http://isna.ir/Main/NewsViews.aspx?ID=News-825902, translated and
quoted by the Iran research section of Honestly-Concerned.org, 17 Nov. 2006.
 Judeophobia and the Denial of the Holocaust in Iran 239

of the world’s media and university professorships are controlled by Jews and
thereby cut off from the “real” truth. In this way, precisely that sort of genocidal
hatred gets incited that helped prepare the way for the Shoah. Every denial of the
Holocaust thus tacitly contains an appeal to repeat it.
In April 2002, an Egyptian columnist for the state-controlled newspaper Al
Akhbar, Egypt’s second-largest daily, wrote:

The entire matter [the Holocaust], as many French and British scientists and researchers
have proven, is nothing more than a huge Israeli plot aimed at extorting the German gov-
ernment in particular and the European countries in general. But I, personally and in light
of this imaginary tale, complain to Hitler, even saying to him from the bottom of my heart,
“If only you had done it, brother, if only it had really happened, so that the world could sigh
in relief [without] their evil and sin.”⁹

The citation illustrates how the Holocaust can be denied and celebrated at the
same time.
Often, however, the enthusiasm for the Shoah is expressed without reserva-
tions. In 1961, at a time when the trial of Adolf Eichmann dominated the head-
lines, this became evident for the first time. The Jordanian Jerusalem Times pub-
lished an “Open Letter to Eichmann,” which stated:

By liquidating six millions you have…conferred a real blessing on humanity.… But the brave
Eichmann finds solace in the fact that this trial will one day culminate in the liquidation of
the remaining six million to avenge your blood.¹⁰

Arab writers such as Abdallah al-Tall eulogized “the martyr Eichmann,” “who fell
in the Holy War.”¹¹ In her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt summa-
rized the mood in the Arab world as follows:

The newspapers in Damascus and Beirut, in Cairo and Jordan did not conceal either their
sympathy for Eichmann nor their regret that he “did not finish the job”; a radio broadcast
from Cairo on the opening day of the trial even included a little sideswipe at the Germans,
reproaching them for the fact that “in the last war, no German plane had ever flown over
and bombed a Jewish settlement.”¹²

This heartfelt desire to see all Jews exterminated was reiterated in the Egyptian
daily Al-Akhbar in April 2001 by the columnist Achmad Ragab: “[Give] thanks to

9 Quoted in MEMRI, Report no. 375, 3 May 2002.

10 Jerusalem Times, 24 Apr. 1961, quoted in Yehoshafat Harkabi, Arab Attitudes to Israel
(Jerusalem, 1972), 279.
11 Ibid.
12 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (Munich, 1986), 81.
240 Matthias Küntzel

Hitler. He took revenge on the Israelis in advance, on behalf of the Palestinians.

Our one complaint against him was that his revenge was not complete enough.”¹³
It is obvious that from a logical point of view, such enthusiasm for the
Holocaust is incompatible with its denial. Logic, however, is beside the point.
Antisemitism builds upon an emotional infrastructure that substitutes for logic
and reason an ephemeral combination of mutually exclusive attributions, whose
only common denominator is the exterminatory hatred of everything Jewish. Thus
all the different and contradictory versions of an anti-Jewish interpretation of the
Holocaust can be deployed simultaneously: first, the enthusiastic “Hurrah!” for
the millionfold extermination; second, the indignant “proof” that this millionfold
extermination is an invention of the Zionists; third, the allegation of a Jewish con-
spiracy against Germany that Hitler effectively thwarted and punished; fourth,
the certainty that the Holocaust was the product of a joint enterprise between the
Zionists and Nazis; fifth, the accusation that the very same Zionists exaggerated
the murder of the Jews with their “Holocaust industry” for obvious reasons; sixth,
the accusation that Israeli actions against the Palestinians represent the “true”
Holocaust—and so on and so forth.
We are dealing here with a phantasmagoric parallel universe in which the
reality principle is constantly ignored and blatantly contradictory phantasms
about Jews all have their place so long as they serve to confirm antisemitic para-
noia and hatred: a universe from which the laws of reason have been excluded
and all mental energy is harnessed for the cause of antisemitism.
For all its confusion, this universe is characterized by two constants: firstly,
by the refusal to come to terms with the facts of the Holocaust as it actually took
place; secondly, by the willingness to see in the Holocaust—in however refracted
a manner—a source of encouragement and inspiration: a kind of precedent that
proves that it is possible to murder Jews by the millions. This is why the exact
wording of Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust tirades is not the issue. He is obsessed with
the subject because he is fascinated by the possibility of a second Holocaust.
Why, then, did Ahmadinejad demonstratively embrace the ultra-Orthodox
Jews at the deniers conference? Why did he personally greet every Jew present
and say that “Zionism should be strictly separated from the Jewish faith”? Is it
perhaps true, as Baham Nirumand, the best-known and influential Iranian exile
in Germany, has written, that Ahmadinejad’s call to eliminate Israel and his

13 Ragab in Al-Akhbar, 20 Apr. 2001. He repeated the remark in Al-Akhbar, 25 Apr. 2001 and 27
May 2001. See also Anti-Defamation League, “Holocaust Denial in the Middle East: The Latest
Anti-Israel Propaganda Theme” (New York 2001), http://www.adl.org/holocaust/denial_ME/
hdme_ genocide_denial.asp
 Judeophobia and the Denial of the Holocaust in Iran 241

Holocaust denial have “little to do” with antisemitism? “In Iran,” Nirumand has
written,

there would no basis for this, since Iranian Jews lived here for 2,000 years with persons
of other faiths. Even in the Islamic state they are fully accepted as a community of faith
and represented in the parliament by elected representatives. Up to now, Ahmadinejad has
never criticized Jews as such, but above all the “Zionist occupation power,” Israel.¹⁴

The following review of the history of the relationship between Iranian Jews and
Iranian Shiites will answer this question.

Najas: The Shiite Dogma of the “Impurity”

of the Jews
It is indeed true the Jews and Muslims share a history going back some 2,700 years
in Iran. This does not mean, however, that Jews have enjoyed equality under the
Shiite rule that began in 1501. On the contrary, in no other Islamic land were Jews
so poorly treated and so brutally persecuted as in Persia. Thus Bernard Lewis, the
dean of historians of Islam, writes, “Expulsion, forced conversion, and massa-
cre—all three of rare occurrence in the Sunni lands—were features of life in Iran
up to the ninetheenth century.”¹⁵ In 1830, 400 Jews in Tabriz had their throats
slashed. In 1839, all the Jews in Mashad were forced to convert to Islam. In 1910,
following rumors of a ritual murder, 6,000 Jews in Shiraz were robbed of all their
possessions: twelve were killed and another fifty wounded.¹⁶ “I do not know any
more miserable, helpless, and pitiful individual on God’s earth than the Jahudi
in those countries,” the Orientalist and voyager Arminius Vambery wrote in 1905
following his return from Persia: “The poor Jew is despised, belabored and tor-
tured.... [H]e is the poorest of the poor.”¹⁷
This inhuman treatment has to do with a particularity of the Shiite image of
the Jew that has no counterpart in Sunni Islam. Only the Shiites established a
system of “ritual purity,” which bears similarities to the attitude of Hindus toward

14 Baham Nirumand, “Der Verrückte aus Teheran,” Die Tageszeitung (taz), 23 June 2006.
15 Bernard Lewis, The Jews of Islam (Princeton, N.J., 1984), 40.
16 David Littmann, “Jews Under Muslim Rule: The Case of Persia,” Wiener Library Bulletin 32,
n.s. nos. 49/50, ed. Robert S. Wistrich (1979): 4 and 12.
17 Cited from David Menashri, “The Jews of Iran,” in Antisemitism in Times of Crisis, eds.
Sander L. Gilman and Steven T. Katz (New York, 1991), 354.
242 Matthias Küntzel

the Pariahs or “untouchables.” This system draws on the Zoroastrianism that was
the state religion in Persia before Islam.¹⁸ According to it, whoever is not Muslim
is najas or “impure.” All contact with a Najas is considered a sort of poisoning.
The paranoid fear of “infection” provoked periodic excesses and led to the devel-
opment of a particular Shiite code of conduct, which especially affected Jews,
since unlike the Armenian Christians and the small Zoroastrian community, the
Jewish minority was present throughout the country. Its members had to live in
ghettoes and were not permitted to go out when it rained or snowed, in order to
prevent their “impurity” from spreading and coming into contact with Muslims.
For the same reason, they were prohibited from visiting public baths or having
any contact with the food and drink of Muslims.¹⁹
Officially, these rules were abolished when the Pahlavis came to power. But
the orthodox clergy continued to insist on them. Thus, in 1962, the Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini, the later Supreme Leader of the Revolution, explicitly propa-
gated the najas doctrine in a widely disseminated handbook titled “Clarification
of the Problems: a Guide to Muslims in their Daily Life.” He noted:

There are eleven things which make unclean: 1. urine; 2. faeces; 3. sperm; 4. carrion; 5.
blood; 6. dog; 7. pig; 8. unbeliever; 9. wine; 10. beer; 11.the sweat of a camel which eats
unclean things.

In a gloss on number 8, he adds: “The entire body of the unbeliever is unclean;

even his hair and nails and body moistures are unclean.” There is, however, some
hope: “When a non-Muslim man or woman is converted to Islam, their body,
saliva, nasal secretions, and sweat are ritually clean. If, however, their clothes
were in contact with their sweaty body before their conversion, these remain
unclean.”²⁰
These prescripts demonstrate the exaggerated Manichaeism of Shiite Islam:
the complement of the elitist view of the self is an unmitigated image of the abso-
lute enemy. The consciousness of one’s own chosenness is tied to the conviction
that the Shiites are the true successors of Mohammed and to the messianic belief
in the return of the “Twelfth Imam.” The image of the enemy, on the other hand,
has biological connotations and is distinguished by a distinctly physical disgust.

18 Founded by the ancient Iranian priest and prophet Zoroaster (630–553 BC), Zoroastrianism
interprets world history as a struggle between the “spirit of good” (Ako Mainyu) and the
“principle of evil” (Ahriman). In this dualistic system, Ahriman is regarded as “the source of
everything that is bad and impure, a murderer and destroyer, and the cause of 9,999 diseases.”
See Gerhard J. Bellinger, Knaurs Grosser Religionsführer (Munich, 1986), 420.
19 Lewis, Jews of Islam, 33ff, Menashri, “Jews of Iran,” 356.
20 Risala-i Tawzih al-Masa’il (Tehran, 1962), cited in Lewis, Jews of Islam, 34.
 Judeophobia and the Denial of the Holocaust in Iran 243

Nonetheless, there is an enormous difference between this Shiite conception and

the Nazi conception, since the option of conversion did not exist in the delirious,
racially-structured universe of the National Socialists.
After the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Khomeini did not officially require the
application of the najas doctrine. Nonetheless, it was discreetly practiced. Thus,
for example, Eliz Sanasarian writes of a beverage factory in which the employment
of Armenian Christians was prohibited, such that “impure” non-Muslims would
not come into contact with the liquids that Muslims would consume or the bottles
that contained them.²¹ Roya Hakakian recalls that in the mid-1980s, the water
fountains and restrooms in her school in Tehran bore signs reading “For Muslims
Only.”²² Asked about non-Muslims in the late 1980s, a Sheik named Murtesa from
the religious center of Qum gave the following symptomatic response: “[They]
are impure in two important areas. 1) They are physically impure as they don’t
keep taharat (clealiness).... 2) Since they do not believe in Islam, their breath is
haram (unclean).... If I had to shake hands with (such) a man...I would then take
a shower and wash my entire body as soon as I could get to my hotel room.”²³
Up till today, Jews living in Iran continue to feel the consequences of the
najas tradition. Still more massive, however, are the effects of the antisemitic
campaigns unleashed by Khomeini in the 1960s that would bring him to power
in 1979.

Khomeini’s Antisemitism

During the reigns of Reza Shah (1925–1941) and of his son Mohammed Reza Shah
(1941–1979), Iranian Jews enjoyed political equality, cultural autonomy, and also
an increasing level of economic security. Nonetheless, even if unofficial, Judeo-
phobia continued to exist. David Menashri, himself an Iranian Jew who lived
through this period, writes: “On many occasions (mainly in small towns, or in
the bazaars), they were even threatened, and sometimes insulted and beaten up.

21 Eliz Sanasarian, cited in Andrew G. Bostom, “The Ayatollahs’ Final Solution?,”

FrontPageMagazine.com, 5 July 2004 www.frontpagemag.com/ articles/Printable.
asp?ID=14071
22 Roya Hakakian, “Reading the Holocaust Cartoons in Tehren,” New York Times, 2 Sept. 2006.
23 Tahmoores Sarraf, Cry of a Nation: The Saga of the Iranian Revolution (New York, 1990),
111ff.
244 Matthias Küntzel

There were numerous anti-Jewish articles and even more so anti-Jewish remarks
and expressions (in speeches, media reports, cartoons, etc.).”²⁴
From 1963 onward, Khomeini, the most important opponent of the Shah, rec-
ognized the mobilizing power of antisemitism and openly exploited it himself.
“I know that you do not want Iran to be under the boot of the Jews,” he cried
out to his supporters on 13 April 1963.²⁵ In the same year, he called the Shah a
Jew in disguise and accused him of taking orders from Israel.²⁶ The response was
enormous: Khomeini had found his theme. Khomeini’s biographer Amir Taheri
writes:

The Ayatollah was by now convinced that the central political theme of contemporary
life was an elaborate and highly complex conspiracy by the Jews—“who controlled every-
thing”—to “emasculate Islam” and dominate the world thanks to the natural wealth of the
Muslim nations.²⁷

From this point on, hatred of Jews—both in its atavistic Shiite form and in the
form of modern antisemitism—would remain a central component of the Islamist
ideology of Iran.
When in June 1963 thousands of Khomeini-influenced theology students set
off to Tehran for a demonstration and were brutally stopped by the Shah’s secu-
rity forces, Khomeini channeled all the anger toward foreign Jews:

Israel does not want the Koran to survive in this country.… It is destroying us. It is destroying
you and the nation. It wants to take possession of the economy. It wants to demolish our
trade and agriculture. It wants to grab the wealth of the country.²⁸

After the Six-Day War of 1967, the antisemitic agitation, which did not differentiate
between Jews and Israelis, intensified. “[I]t was [the Jews] who first established
anti-Islamic propaganda and engaged in various stratagems, and as you can see,
this activity continues down to the present,” Khomeini wrote in 1970 in his main

24 Menashri, “Jews of Iran,” 359.

25 Cheryl Benard and Zalmay Khalilzad, Gott in Teheran: Irans Islamische Republik (Frankfurt
a.M., 1988), 260, n. 26.
26 Amir Taheri, The Spirit of Allah: Khomeini & the Islamic Revolution (New York, 1986), 131ff.
27 Ibid., 159.
28 Henner Fürtig, “Die Bedeutung der iranischen Revolution von 1979 als Ausgangspunkt
für eine antijüdisch orientierte Islamisierung,” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung, vol. 12
(Berlin, 2003), 77.
 Judeophobia and the Denial of the Holocaust in Iran 245

work Islamic Government.²⁹ “[T]he Jews…wish to establish Jewish domination

throughout the world,” he continued, “Since they are a cunning and resourceful
group of people, I fear that…they may one day achieve their goal.”³⁰ In September
1977, he declared finally: “The Jews have grasped the world with both hands and
are devouring it with an insatiable appetite, they are devouring America and have
now turned their attention to Iran and still they are not satisfied.”³¹
Two years later, Khomeini was the unchallenged leader of the Iranian revo-
lution. His antisemitic tirades found favor with the opponents of the Shah, both
Leftists and Islamists. Khomeini’s antisemitism ran along the same lines as the
Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which were republished in Persian in the summer
of 1978 and widely disseminated in order to serve as a weapon against the Shah,
Israel, and the Jews.³²
During the revolutionary period, between September 1977 and February 1979,
the situation of Jews in Iran was highly precarious. David Menashri cites the
threats circulated by the National Front of Young Iranian Muslims in 1978:

O bloodthirsty people, who suck the blood of each one of us Muslims.... Now your golden
dreams have come to an end. You are hereby warned that you must leave the country as
soon as possible, otherwise we shall massacre all the Jews from the youngest to the oldest.
Every age needs its Hitler to take care of the people of deceit and eradicate the offspring of
the Jews from the earth, so that our brothers in religion in the Arab countries will live in
peace.³³

Khomeini did not mince words either, as Meir Litvak shows: “Pointing to the ‘most
noble messenger’ as his model, he reminds his readers that when the Jewish tribe
of Banu Qurayza, who were a troublesome group, ‘caused corruption among the
Muslims,’ the Prophet eliminated them.”³⁴

29 Ayatollah Rouhollah Mousavi Khomeini, Islamic Government: Governance of the Jurist

(Tehran: Institute for the Compilation and Publication of Imam Khomeini’s Works, International
Affairs Division), 7. Page references are to the PDF version made available by the Iran Chamber
Society at http://www.iranchamber.com/history/rkhomeini/ayatollah _khomeini.php.
30 Ibid., 79.
31 Kauthar—An Anthology of the Speeches of Imam Khomeini (s.a.) 1962–1978 (Tehran:
Institute for the Compilation and Publication of the Works of Imam Khomeini, International
Affairs Division, vol. 1, 1995), 370.
32 Orly Rahimiyan-Tsadik of Ben-Gurion University, is doing extensive research on the Persian
copies of the Protocols published from the 1940s to the present time.
33 Cited in Menashri, “Jews of Iran,” 360.
34 Meir Litvak, “The Islamic Republic of Iran and the Holocaust: Anti-Semitism and Anti-
Zionism,” Journal of Israeli History 25, no. 1 (Mar. 2006): 271.
246 Matthias Küntzel

After the victory of the revolution in 1979, such rhetoric was toned down.
Khomeini could ignore neither the signs of submission given by the Jewish com-
munity nor the precept of tolerance laid down in the Koran. In May 1979, he
declared: “We distinguish between Jews and Zionists. Zionism has nothing to do
with religion.”³⁵ From then on, Jews (like the Armenian Christians and Zoroastri-
ans) were treated as wards of a traditional Islamic state—Dhimmis—according to
the “principles of Islamic justice.” According to Article 14 of the Iranian constitu-
tion, “this principle is applied to everyone who does not participate in activities
or conspiracies directed against Islam or the Islamic Republic of Iran.” In order
to discourage such “conspiracies,” several Jewish leaders, including the former
chair of the Jewish community, Habib Alqanayan, were sentenced to death and
executed. The sole reason given was that they had ties to Israel and Zionism.

The Jews in Iran

From among the approximately 100,000 Jews who lived in Iran under the Shah,
some 25,000 remained in Iran after Khomeini took power. The majority (around
15,000) live in Tehran; the rest, in Isfahan, Schiraz,and Hamedan. They thereby
represent the largest Jewish community in any Muslim country. Jews were permit-
ted to move out of their residential quarters and to some degree enter the Iranian
mainstream. They are free to observe their religious traditions, relatively undis-
turbed, in over 100 synagogues across the country. At the same time, Jews in Iran
are made clearly to feel their subordinate Dhimmi status. Thus, for example, they
are excluded from “sensitive” senior posts in the military and judiciary. Jewish
schools are required to have Muslim principals. They are forced to remain open
on the Sabbath and Hebrew lessons are not permitted outside prayer time. Prayer
books are printed in Farsi instead of Hebrew, as a means of controlling what is
studied.³⁶
Again and again, the Iranian media and leadership attack Jews in general.
They cite the anti-Jewish passages from the Sunna and the Koran, and they equate
the alleged behavior of Israel with that of the Jewish tribes of Medina in the time

35 Menashri, “Jews of Iran,” 363.

36 Rachel Silverman, “It’s not the best place for Jews, but Iran’s home to a sizeable
community,” Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA), 4 June 2006; Ewen MacAskill, Simon Tisdall, and
Robert Tait, “Iran’s Jews learn to live with Ahmadinejad,” The Guardian, 27 June 2006.
 Judeophobia and the Denial of the Holocaust in Iran 247

of the Prophet.³⁷ It is suggested that there is a contemporary “Jewish threat” to

Iran as well. The example of the Grand Ayatollah Noori Hamadani, for whom
the redemption of Muslims is tied to victory over “the Jews,” is instructive. “One
should explain in the clearest terms the danger the Jews pose to the [Iranian]
people and to the Muslims,” Noori Hamadani insisted in April 2005: “One should
fight the Jews and vanquish them so that the conditions for the advent of the
Hidden Imam [the Shiite Messiah] be met.” At the same, he praised Mohammed’s
anti-Jewish massacre in 627 as a “step towards strengthening Islam, in order
to crush the bastion of the global arrogance, and...to eradicate this cancerous
tumor.”³⁸
Tolerance of the Jewish community in Iran is combined with the massive dis-
semination of antisemitic literature. Thus, in 1984, the newspaper Imam, pub-
lished by the Iranian embassy in London, reprinted excerpts from the Protocols.³⁹
Somewhat later, the periodical Eslami serialized the Protocols under the title “The
Smell of Blood: Jewish Conspiracies.”
Just two years ago, in 2005, at the Iranian stand at the Frankfurt Book Fair, I
was readily able to purchase an English edition of the Protocols published by the
Islamic Propagation Organization of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Other antise-
mitic literature was also available, such as Henry Ford’s The International Jew, and
Mohammad Taqi Taqipour’s screed, Tale of the “Chosen People” and the Legend
of “Historical Right.” The cover illustration on the latter volume had caught my
eye: a red Star of David superimposed over a grey skull and a yellow map of the
world.⁴⁰ Obviously, even after the death of Khomeini in 1989, the worldwide dis-
semination of antisemitism by Iran did not come to an end.
David Menashri is undoubtedly justified when he takes such propaganda as
an indication of the regime’s real attitude toward Jews and points to the provi-
sional nature and fragility of the tolerance that is, for the moment, still accorded
to the Iranian Jewish community.⁴¹ By virtue of the mixture of incitement and
restraint practiced by the Iranian regime, the Jewish community has been kept in a
permanent state of uncertainty since 1979 and this uncertainty has only increased

37 Menashri, “Jews of Iran,” 365f.

38 Litvak, “Islamic Republic of Iran and the Holocaust,” 272; and MEMRI, Special Dispatch
Series, no. 897, 22 Apr. 2005. In 627, all the men (comprising some 600–900 individuals) in
the last remaining Jewish tribe in Medina were killed by decapitation and all the women and
children were sold into slavery.
39 Robert Wistrich, Der antisemitische Wahn (Munich, 1987), 320f.
40 See http://www.trans-int.com/news/archives/60-The-Protocols-of-the-Elders-of-Zion-at-
the.html
41 Menashri, “Jews of Iran,” 364.
248 Matthias Küntzel

since the election of Ahmadinejad. Whereas, on the one hand, the Iranian Pres-
ident cites the presence of a Jewish community for the media as proof of his lack
of prejudice, at the same time he lets one of his closest advisors, Mohammed Ali
Ramin, threaten Iranian Jews by invoking the najas doctrine. Thus, in June 2006,
Ramin said: “Jews are a dirty people. That is why one has accused them through-
out history of being responsible for the spread of deadly diseases and plagues.”⁴²
It is hardly any wonder, then, that the leaders of the Iranian Jewish community
outdo themselves in offering gestures of subservience toward the regime. When,
in June 1999, thirteen Iranian Jews were arrested for allegedly spying on behalf
of Israel, the Jewish community found itself constrained to praise the Iranian
government. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has demonstrated to the world,” it
declared in a statement, “that it has treated the Jewish community…well; …the
arrest and charges against a number of Iranian Jews has nothing to do with their
religion.”⁴³ The community’s statements from 2006 were similarly abject. Thus it
congratulated the regime on the progress made in the Iranian nuclear program;
it celebrated the martyrs of the war against Iraq; it expressed solidarity with the
“Lebanese resistance” in its fight against Israel and it called on Jews the world
over to condemn the “Israeli attacks” and an Israeli policy that “tramples upon
the humane tenets of the Jewish tradition.”⁴⁴
Today, the Jewish community serves Ahmadinejad not only as an alibi in his
power game, but also increasingly as a deterrent: in the event of an Israeli attack
on Iranian nuclear facilities, the community would find itself held hostage and
vulnerable to acts of reprisal. Irrespective of the latitude that Ahmadinejad has
for the time being left the Iranian Jews, his rhetoric is steeped in an antisemitism
that is unprecedented for a head of state after the Second World War.

Ahmadinejad’s Antisemitism

What thoughts crossed the mind of the Iranian President as he embraced the
Jews of the Neturei Karta sect at the deniers conference in Tehran? Was his first
thought “so nice of you to help me!”? Or did he think rather “You idiots! You’ll
soon be next!”? We do not know. And we do not know either whether he had a
thorough shower after the meeting.

42 Ynet, 8 June 2006, cited from Newsletter der israelischen Botschaft in Berlin, 8 June 2006.
43 Andrew G. Bostom, “The Ayatollahs’ Final Solution?,” FrontPageMagazine.com, 5 July 2004.
44 See the homepage of the “Tehran Jewish Committee,” www.iranjewish.com
 Judeophobia and the Denial of the Holocaust in Iran 249

Ahmadinejad is not a racist Social Darwinist, who, like Hitler, wants to elim-
inate every last trace of “Jewish blood.” He does not attack “the Jews,” but rather
“the Zionists.” He says, “Two thousand Zionists want to rule the world.”⁴⁵ He
says, “The Zionists” have for sixty years now blackmailed “all western govern-
ments.”⁴⁶ “The Zionists have imposed themselves on a substantial portion of the
banking, financial, cultural and media sectors.”⁴⁷ “The Zionists” fabricated the
Danish Muhammad cartoons. “The Zionists” are responsible for the destruction
of the dome of the Golden Mosque in Iraq.⁴⁸ But he invests the word “Zionist” with
exactly the same sense as that with which Hitler once invested the word “Jew”:
namely, that of being the incarnation of all evil. Even if the regime tolerates the
Jewish community of Tehran, whoever makes Jews responsible for all the ills of
the world—whether as “Judases” or “Zionists”—is clearly driven by antisemitism
of a genocidal nature. Demonization of Jews, Holocaust denial, and the will to
eliminate Israel—these are the three elements of an ideological constellation that
collapses as soon as one of the elements is removed.
The morbid phantasms of Ahmadinejad and his supporters are impervious
to reality. Consider, for example, the case of the Iranian historian who on Iranian
television touted his “discovery” that in 1883 French Jews murdered 150 Christian
children in the suburbs of Paris, to use their blood in the baking of matzah bread.
The actual revelation, however, was not supposed to be the alleged murder, but
rather the fact that while the memory of the murder had lived on in the souls of
Europeans, “the incident is, regrettably, never mentioned—due to the growing
influence of the Zionist lobby in Europe—or, more precisely, the influence of the
Jews.”⁴⁹ Could there be any clearer proof of how helpless Europe is in the face of
the Zionists and their media empires?
Circular reasoning such as the foregoing is not susceptible of refutation.
The louder the liberal West protests against Iran’s Holocaust denial or threats
to destroy Israel, the clearer for Ahmadinejad is the proof of Zionist domina-
tion. In a conversation with the editors of the German news weekly Spiegel, the
Iranian President reacted as follows to the remark that Israel’s right to exist is not
questioned by the magazine: “I am glad that you are honest people and say that

45 Hooman Majd, “Mahmoud and Me,” New York Observer, 2 Oct. 2006.
46 MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series, no. 1091, 14 Feb. 2006.
47 From “Letter to the Noble Americans,” available at http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/
meast/11/29/ahmadinejad.letter/
48 WorldNetDaily, 11 Feb. 2006.
49 “Iranian TV Blood Libel: Jewish Rabbis killed Hundreds of European Children to use Their
Blood for Passover Holiday,” MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series, no. 1053, 22 Dec. 2005.
250 Matthias Küntzel

you are required to support the Zionists.”⁵⁰ Only when we too finally realize that
the Holocaust is a Jewish lie, only when we too want to annihilate Israel, only
then would Ahmadinejad be convinced that we are academically credible and
politically free. It is this maddening circularity that characterizes contemporary
Iranian Holocaust denial and that makes the revolutionary mission of the Iranian
leadership so dangerous.

Holocaust Denial as Liberation Struggle

Whoever denies the Holocaust kills the victims a second time. To destroy the
memory of the victims completes the work of their extermination. This has
nothing to do with freedom of opinion in the sense of human rights protections:
Article 17 of the European Humans Rights Convention lays down that there is no
right to undermine the rights and freedoms that the convention is meant to pro-
tect.⁵¹ And Holocaust denial has absolutely nothing to do with science: there is
no other crime in history that has been so precisely described by perpetrators,
victims, and external observers. Whereas serious research on the Holocaust tests
and, if necessary, modifies previous findings on the basis of established facts,
Holocaust deniers only acknowledge those facts that fit their antisemitic world-
view.
The novelty of Ahmadinejad consists in his fusing Holocaust denial with the
historical claim of Shiite Islam to be the religion of the politically dispossessed.
Ahmadinejad is the first to celebrate the intellectual and moral crime of Holo-
caust denial in adopting the stance of a freedom fighter. Until now, Holocaust
denial has been a marginal addition to the traditional antisemitic arsenal, serving
the struggle to reduce alleged Jewish influence. Integrating antisemitism into his
discourse of global populism, Ahmadinejad has inserted it within the context of
freedom versus enslavement. “They are allowed to study anything except for the
Holocaust myth,” Ahmadinejad said of Europeans in February 2006: “Are these

50 “Wir sind entschlossen,” Interview with Mahmud Ahmadinejad, Spiegel 22/2006, 29 May
2006.
51 Article 17 of the European Convention on Human Rights reads: “Nothing in this Convention
may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity
or perform any act aimed at the destruction on any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.”
 Judeophobia and the Denial of the Holocaust in Iran 251

not medieval methods?… On the face of it, the technology has changed, but the
culture and the way of thinking remain medieval.”⁵²
In this way, Ahmadinejad has managed to make Holocaust denial a mark of
progressiveness and to place the Tehran conference under the sign of “freedom of
thought.” “It would be good for Mr. Blair to participate in the Holocaust seminar
in Tehran,” the spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Hamid Reza Asefi,
explained, since at the conference Blair would be able to “say the kind of things
he cannot say in London.”⁵³ But who was it that suppressed the free speech of the
British premier? In this connection as well, Ahmadinejad had a ready answer:
“The pillaging Zionist regime has managed, for 60 years, to extort all Western
governments on the basis of this myth [of the Holocaust].… They are hostages in
the hands of the Zionists.”⁵⁴
Since December 2005, the Iranian President has placed the denial of the
Holocaust at the center of his agitation. During this time, the Iranian regime has
spared no effort to establish the “exposure” of the “Holocaust Myth” as a new
historiographical paradigm. Thus the “lie about the Holocaust” has become a
regular topic of televised Friday sermons.⁵⁵ Talk shows on public television
feature a parade of historians who mock the “fairy tale about the gas cham-
bers.” The Iranian state press agency has developed into a platform for Holocaust
deniers from all over the world.
The “Holocaust International Cartoon Contest” announced by the Iranian
newspaper Hamshahri in February 2006 revealed the new style of Iranian Holo-
caust denial: creative, modern, unrestrained, and self-assertive. Hamshahri has
the largest circulation of any paper in Iran and it is publicly owned by the city
of Tehran. “Whether or not there was a Holocaust, that is up to the cartoon-
ists to decide,” Achmed Kasemi, one of the organizers of the contest, said.⁵⁶
The newspaper received over 1000 submissions from 62 countries. In fall 2006,
a selection of 200 cartoons was exhibited in the Palestine Museum in Tehran.
This will undoubtedly have been the first internationally publicized exhibition of
antisemitic art since 1945. The exhibit was opened by Saffar Harandi, the Iranian
Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance. The ambassador of Lebanon and the

52 MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series, no. 1091, 14 Feb. 2006 http://memri.org/bin/articles.

cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP109106
53 “Iran Sends Blair Invitation to Holocaust Conference,” Deutsche Welle, 18 Jan. 2006.
54 MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series, no. 1091, 14 Feb. 2006 http://memri.org/bin/articles.
cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP109106
55 MEMRI, Special Report, no. 39, 5 Jan. 2006 http://memri.org/ bin/articles.
cgi?Page=archives&Area=sr&ID=SR3906
56 Matthias Küntzel, “Die zweite Spaltung der Welt,” Internationale Politik (Apr. 2006): 75.
252 Matthias Küntzel

representative of the Palestinian territories figured among the foreign dignitaries

present.⁵⁷ The first prize of $12,000 went to a cartoon by a Moroccan that drew par-
allels between Israel’s controversial security barrier and Auschwitz. The second
and third prizes went to cartoons that present the Holocaust as a crude fabrica-
tion. The former depicts a stage backdrop that has been knocked over and that is
meant to represent a gas chamber and crematorium: “Who knocked that down?”
one Jew asks; “Faurisson,” replies another. The latter shows two grinning soldiers
above a freshly dug mass grave in which they are placing not real corpses, but
merely paper cut-outs. There appear, then, not to have been real victims.⁵⁸
Up to 2006, we associated Holocaust denial with the self-styled “expert” opin-
ions of individual cranks in various countries or with the small disparate band of
neo-Nazis. Ostracized by society as obscurantists, the Holocaust deniers had to
struggle for every millimeter of respectability they could muster. Now, Ahmadine-
jad has reversed the customary roles: it is not the Holocaust denier who has to
justify himself—but the non-denier. It is not the denier who must struggle for his
freedom; it is rather the non-deniers—like Tony Blair, for example—who are not
free. Such inversions suggest that Iranian Holocaust deniers are after more than
just disseminating anti-Israeli propaganda. For them, the rewriting of history is
an inherent part of a global Islamist mission.

“Historical War”

In his first speech on the guiding principles of his politics, Ahmadinejad made
this clear. “We are in the process of an historical war,... and this war has been
going on for hundreds of years,” he declared in October 2005. This is a war,
then, that has nothing to do originally with the Middle East conflict and that
will be far from over even when Israel has been eliminated. He continued: “We
have to understand the depth of the disgrace of the enemy, until our holy hatred
expands continuously and strikes like a wave.”⁵⁹ This “holy hatred” is boundless
and unconditional. It will not be mitigated by any form of Jewish or non-Jewish
conduct—other than subordination under the Sharia or Koran.
In his letter to George W. Bush, the Iranian President described the objective
of his mission: “Those with insights can already hear the sounds of the shattering

57 Baham Nirumand, “Holocaust-Ausstellung in Teheran,” Tageszeitung (taz), 16 Aug. 2006.

58 See http://www.irancartoon.com/120/holocaust
59 Quoted in MEMRI, Special Dispatch Series, no. 1013, 28 Oct. 2005.
 Judeophobia and the Denial of the Holocaust in Iran 253

and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems.” We are
also told in this letter just how he thinks the liberal democracies will be shattered.
Even here, if albeit in slightly diluted form, the ideology of martyrdom—you love
life, we love death—is propagated: “A bad ending belongs only to those who have
chosen the life of this world.… A good land and eternal paradise belong to those
servants who fear His majesty and do not follow their lascivious selves.”
In the Shiite version of Islamism, we are confronted with an opponent who
combats the achievements of modernity as Satan’s deed, who denounces the
system of international relations that was created after 1945 as a “Jewish-Chris-
tian conspiracy,” and who therefore wishes to overturn the accepted historiogra-
phy of this system. At the start of the deniers conference, Foreign Minister Mottaki
explained that the problem is that the “wording of historical occurrences and
their analysis [are written from] the perspective of the West.”⁶⁰ As against this
“Western” historiography, Islamism seeks to create a new historical “truth,” in
which the Holocaust is declared a myth, while the Twelfth Imam is deemed to be
real. Whereas the delusional system of Holocaust denial is elevated to the norm,
any divergence from the latter is denounced as a symptom of “Jewish domina-
tion.”
Even as he is conducting his religious war, Ahmadinejad also plays the role
of a global populist. His speeches are addressed to all the world’s “oppressed.”
He cultivates good relations with Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez and ingratiates
himself to the Western Left by employing anti-American rhetoric. His use of the
word “Zionist” is particularly relevant in this connection as well. It is the Trojan
horse under cover of which he makes his antisemitism respectable: allowing him
to be all at once antisemite and Holocaust denier, on the one hand, and spokes-
man of the so-called “oppressed nations,” on the other.
This is why the Iranian leadership vehemently denies the charges of antisem-
itism, as well as all sympathy for Nazism. Islam, Mottaki explained in his opening
address, “stands in clear contradiction to racist and Nazi ideology.” “I say to you
unequivocally,” he continued, “that Judeophobia is a western phenomenon that
only concerns western States. There has never been such a thing in the Islamic
states.”⁶¹ Ahmadinejad’s highly publicized embrace of the Jews present at the
deniers conference—who were later even accorded a special audience with the
President—was meant to support this claim and to demonstrate to the world that

60 Iran Research of Honestly-Concerned.org, “Die staatlich organisierte Teheraner

Hasspropagandakonferenz...,” http://www.honestlyconcerned.info/ bin/articles.cgi?ID=IR430
6&Category=ir&Subcategory=19
61 Honestly Concerned, Iran Research section.
254 Matthias Küntzel

while Iran fights Zionism as a political movement, it respects Jews as representa-

tives of a religion. The pictures of anti-Israel Jews with their broad-brimmed hats
amicably exchanging business cards with the equally anti-Israel Muslim clergy
were beamed around the world: pictures of brotherhood and harmony that create
the impression that it is indeed first in a “world without Zionism” that perpetual
peace will break out. In keeping with this image, four weeks after the deniers
conference, Ahmadinejad was greeted by Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez,
who praised him as a “fighter for just causes, a revolutionary and a brother,”
and then warmly received by yet another icon of the Left, Nicaragua’s president
Daniel Ortega.⁶²
Although Holocaust denial is not a popular theme for the Iranian popula-
tion and has drawn criticism even from within the ranks of the Mullah’s regime,⁶³
Ahmadinejad and his allies persist in their campaign. There were plans to make
the cartoon contest and exhibition yearly events. “We will continue until the
destruction of Israel,” the curator of the 2006 version of the exhibit insisted.⁶⁴
This appears also to be the motto of the organizer of the deniers conference,
Mohammad Ali Ramin. Thus in January 2007, he explained:

The participants in the Holocaust conference have created the “World Foundation for Holo-
caust Research” and I will be the director of this foundation. The headquarters of the foun-
dation is for the moment in Tehran. If, however, at some point the European governments—
Germany, for example—are prepared to guarantee the freedom of opinion of independent
researchers, we will move the headquarters from Tehran to Berlin.⁶⁵

Iranian historians have already made queries in Poland as to whether they might
undertake certain “calculations” in Auschwitz. In this case, however, their request
fell on deaf ears. It “goes beyond every imaginable norm to call into question this
matter, to discuss it, or to negotiate about it,” then Polish Foreign Minister Stefan
Meller remarked.⁶⁶
It should go without saying that a country that makes such madness—which
goes beyond every imaginable norm—into government policy has placed itself
outside of the community known as the “United Nations.” It is regrettable that
for the moment no other state has joined Israel in demanding the temporary

62 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 15 Jan. 2007.

63 Criticism of Tehran Holocaust Denial Conference in Arab and Iranian Media, in MEMRI
Special Dispatch Series, no. 1425, 16 Jan. 2007.
64 “Iran: Moroccan Wins Holocaust Cartoon Contest,” New York Times, 2 Nov. 2006.
65 Honestly Concerned, Iran Research section, Interview with Mohammad Ali Ramin, 7 Jan.
2007.
66 Spiegel-Online, 17 Feb. 2006.
 Judeophobia and the Denial of the Holocaust in Iran 255

suspension of Iran’s UN membership. It is particularly noteworthy that Germany

in particular continues to maintain perfectly normal relations with Ahmadine-
jad’s Iran. So long as the international community fails to react in an appropriate
manner, Tehran will continue to turn the tables on it. Thus on 8 January 2007, the
Iranian government filed a complaint with the UN Human Rights Council against
those who do not deny the Holocaust. “History cannot be rewritten as it pleases
the Israeli regime,” Alireza Moayera, Iran’s representative to the Council, wrote
in his letter to its president, Luis Alfonso de Alba: “It cannot be manipulated
and hand-picked selectively and it cannot be reformatted based on the political
agenda or historical ambitions of this regime.”
Robert Solomon Wistrich
Negationism, Antisemitism,
and Anti-Zionism
Already in 1971, the French philosopher, Vladimir Jankélévitch, had predicted the
increasingly ominous connection between Israel, antisemitism, and the Shoah,
which has come to haunt the contemporary European mind. He remarked on the
extraordinary shadow which the Holocaust had cast over the events of the Second
World War and modernity as a whole—a kind of invisible cloud of remorse. This
was the “shameful secret” (“ce secret honteux”) behind the apparent “bonne
conscience contemporaine”—the hidden anxiety which seized so many Europe-
ans at their belated realization of the enormity of the crime in which they were so
deeply implicated.
How then could one be freed from such a terrible incubus? Jankélévitch sug-
gested that “anti-Zionism” was likely to provide the providential and unexpected
opportunity for much-needed relief: for it offered the freedom, the right, and
perhaps even the duty to be “antisemitic” in the name of democracy!¹ Anti-Zion-
ism would become the new “justifiable” and democratized antisemitism of the
future, finally placed within the reach of Mr. and Mrs. Everyman. And what if
the Jews themselves were no better than Nazis? Why, that would be just wonder-
ful. One would no longer have to feel sorry for them—after all, “they would have
deserved their fate.” What better alibi could there be for forgetting the unspeak-
able crime or diluting European responsibilities and thinking about happier
things?
Today, of course, such observations come more naturally and may even
seem self-evident, though they were much less clear at the time. At least some
of the new European Judeophobia functions psychologically as a kind of over-
compensation mechanism for discharging latent and often unavowed guilt feel-
ings about the Jews. In fact, by branding Israel as a Nazi State, one is killing two
birds with one stone. One may point the finger at the erstwhile victims who are
no better than “we, Europeans” (in fact they are worse, since they did not try
to learn from their history); and one is free to express in a “politically correct”
anti-Zionist language those sentiments which are no longer respectable among
educated people—namely dislike of Jews. The Star of David is thereby visually
metamorphosed into the swastika, the victims mutate into perpetrators and

1 Vladimir Jankélévitch, L’Imprescriptible: pardonner dans l’honneur et la dignité (Paris, 1996;

1st ed. 1971), 188.
258 Robert Solomon Wistrich

Jews (or others) who defend the “Nazi” State of Israel can expect to be vilified
as “racists,” “fascists,” and “ethnic cleansers.” Indeed, in many European coun-
tries, it is becoming increasingly difficult to even discuss the Shoah without bal-
ancing it by appropriate references to Palestine, intended to offset the horrors of
Nazi Germany with those of the Palestinian naqba (catastrophe) since 1948.²
For several decades now, the Shoah has ceased to be a taboo subject. On the
contrary, it is at the heart of contemporary Western consciousness—a subject of
constant interdisciplinary research and media interest—integral to the culture,
pedagogy, and politics of the new Europe.³ Yet this preoccupation (which has at
times assumed an obsessive quality) also has its perverse side effects. The most
obvious perversion is of course, straightforward Holocaust denial. I mean the sur-
realist claim that there was no “extermination” of the Jews, that there were no
gas chambers, that the Jews and/or Zionists (with some help from the Western
Allies or the Communists) simply invented the “hoax of the century.” As Alain
Finkielkraut once put it, the classical antisemites screamed: “À mort les Juifs”
(Death to the Jews) but the Holocaust deniers added something new—“Les Juifs
ne sont pas morts” (the Jews did not die).⁴ This was and is a double assassination.
It begins with the genocidal antisemitism that produced the mass murder of Euro-
pean Jewry and is followed by the denial that the six million were even here, on
our planet, that they ever existed. To quote Per Ahlmark: “First the antisemites
take Jewish lives; a few decades later they take their deaths from them too.”⁵
Holocaust denial in its purest sense is precisely this sickening effort of the
Jew-haters to destroy memory. Beyond that, by accusing Jews and/or Zionists
of “inventing” the Shoah to extract billions of dollars and blackmail postwar
Germany or the West, it has added a peculiarly vile conspiracy theory to the
arsenal of millennial antisemitism and transformed the victims into superla-
tively cunning and fraudulent perpetrators. The main purpose of this monstrous
perversion has been “to clear Nazism from its criminal stigma and rehabilitate
antisemitism.”⁶ Hence this type of denial is primarily an expression of neo-Nazi,

2 A good illustration of this syndrome is Belgium; see Joël Kotek, La Belgique et ses Juifs: De
l’antijudaïsme comme code culturel, à l’antisionisme comme religion civique (Les Études du
Crif, no. 4, June 2004).
3 See Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust (Proceedings of the Conference on
Education, Remembrance and Research in Stockholm, 26–28 Jan. 2000).
4 Alain Finkielkraut, L’avenir d’une negation: Reflexions sur la question du genocide (Paris,
1982).
5 Per Ahlmark, quoted in the workshop on “Facing Denial in Society and Education,”
Stockholm International Forum, 235.
6 Ibid.
 Negationism, Antisemitism, and Anti-Zionism 259

far-right and so-called “revisionist” politics in Europe, North America, and other
parts of the world. Let me quote Irwin Cotler on this classic Orwellian cover-up of
a true international conspiracy:

[T]the Holocaust denial movement whitewashes the crimes of the Nazis, as it excoriates the
crimes of the Jews. It not only holds that the Holocaust was a hoax, but maligns the Jew for
fabricating the hoax.⁷

Nowhere has this imposture been more transparent and widespread than among
militant Muslims. For example, the present leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Ali Kha-
meini, brazenly condemns the “exaggerated statistics on Jewish killings” and
emphasizes the close relations between the Zionists and the German Nazis.⁸ The
Lebanese Hezbollah, like its Iranian paymasters, sees the “Auschwitz lie” as an
integral part of its general delegitimization of Israel and use of antisemitic dis-
course. Its spiritual leader, the late Sheikh Fadlallah, never tired of referring to
the six million victims as a “pure fiction,” a mark of Zionist cunning and rapacity;
and a testament to the ability of Jews to squeeze the West and manipulate its guilt
feelings, as a result of their stranglehold over the capitalist economy and mass
media.⁹ This media control allegedly permits Israel to persecute all those—like
the French Holocaust denier Roger Garaudy—who dare to challenge its founding
myths.¹⁰ Islam and the Palestinians are naturally regarded as the prime victims
of the “Zionist” hoax.
The former Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ikrima Sabri, like not a few Palestin-
ian clerics and intellectuals, eagerly seized on Holocaust denial to assert that
the Zionists used this issue “to blackmail the Germans financially” and protect
Israel.¹¹ The dark shadow of Shylock is never far from such “revisionist” dis-
course. As one Palestinian professor at the Islamic University in Gaza City put it
a decade ago,

7 See the comments of Irwin Cotler on this phenomenon, in ibid., 242.

8 Quoted in Jerusalem Post, 25 Apr. 2001.
9 Esther Webman, “Die Rhetorik der Hisbollah: die Weiterführung eines antisemitischen
Diskurses,” Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung, no. 12 (Berlin, 2003): 47–49.
10 Goetz Nordbruch, The Socio-Historical Background of Holocaust Denial in Arab Countries.
Reactions to Roger Garaudy’s The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics, ACTA series, no. 17
(Jerusalem: Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, 2001).
11 Interview, New York Times, 26 Mar. 2000.
260 Robert Solomon Wistrich

[T]he Jews view it [the Holocaust] as a profitable activity so they inflate the number of
victims all the time.... As you know, when it comes to economics and investments, the Jews
have been very experienced even since the days of The Merchant of Venice.¹²

At the same time, while slandering Jews and denying the reality of the Holo-
caust, some Arab and Muslim commentators have come to stress that Israel—the
so-called “heir of Holocaust victims”—has committed far worse crimes than those
of the Nazis. At the UN-sponsored Durban Conference of 2001, the decision was
even implemented publicly to trivialize the Holocaust by denying its uniqueness
and turning it into one of “many holocausts”—ultimately far less important than
the Palestinian tragedy.
The growing centrality of Holocaust denial in contemporary Arab discourse
was already revealed ten years ago by the Arab forum on historical revisionism
that took place in Amman on May 13, 2001—replacing the aborted conference
scheduled for Beirut two months earlier.¹³ At this gathering of Arab journalists
and members of professional associations opposed to “normalization” with
Israel, speakers enthusiastically praised the French “revisionists” Roger Garaudy
and Robert Faurisson.¹⁴ They also argued that Zionism was much worse than
Nazism, denounced the handful of Arab intellectuals who were critical of Holo-
caust denial and insisted that “revisionism” was not a reactionary ideology at all
but a well-documented research project.¹⁵
The case of Roger Garaudy was particularly significant. As a prominent left-
wing French intellectual (originally Catholic, then Stalinist) converted to Islam,
he became a culture hero in the Arab world after his trial and conviction in a Paris

12 Holocaust Denial in the Middle East. The Latest Anti-Israel Propaganda Themes (New York:
Anti-Defamation League, 2001), 12.
13 The driving force behind that aborted conference was Swiss Holocaust denier, Jürgen Graf,
founder of The Truth and Justice Association; it was co-sponsored by the California-based
Institute of Historical Review—the leading “revisionist” organization in the world. Among
those originally scheduled to speak were French deniers Garaudy and Robert Faurisson, and
the German neo-Nazi ideologue, Horst Mahler. Lebanese President Rafiq Hariri (murdered by
Hezbollah operatives in 2005) cancelled the Conference under intense prodding from the U.S.
State Department and an open letter of protest by 14 Arab intellectuals. However, after severe
criticism for having conceded too much to the “Zionist” narrative of the Shoah, several of these
intellectuals retracted, including Edward Said and Mahmud Darwish.
14 Free Arab Voice Online (FAV) 15, 28 Apr., 22 May 2001; Jordan Times Online, 15 May 2001.
15 Ibrahim Alloush, “Why is the ‘Holocaust’ Important to Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims?”
FAV, 28 Apr. 2001; and the interview in the California-based Journal of Historical Review (May/
June 2001).
 Negationism, Antisemitism, and Anti-Zionism 261

court in 1998 for antisemitic incitement and négationisme.¹⁶ Garaudy’s completely

unoriginal thesis that there was no Nazi extermination policy or gas chambers,
his charge that Zionists had collaborated with the Nazis, and that Israel fabri-
cated the Holocaust to justify its occupation of Arab lands, has proven to be a
source of deep satisfaction for many Arab intellectuals.¹⁷
If such “revisionist” charlatans as Henri Rocques, Wilhelm Stäglich, and
Gerd Honsik can be regarded as respectable historians in the Arab world, it is
small wonder, that The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics struck such a respon-
sive chord among Muslims. Among Garaudy’s most fervent advocates was former
Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the same cleric who proclaimed
on “Jerusalem Day” 2001 in Teheran that “one atomic bomb would wipe out Israel
without a trace.”¹⁸ It is, of all-too-revealing of this radical Islamist mind-set that
the real Nazi Holocaust should be so vehemently denied by those determined to
repeat it.
A discussion eleven years ago on Al-Jazeera TV (15 May 2001) revealed just
how widespread such genocidal passions had become.¹⁹ During the debate, Hayat
Atiya, the female translator of Garaudy into Arabic, shouted before the cameras
(while brandishing the photograph of an Arab child accidentally killed during
the intifada):

Here is the Holocaust.... There is no Jewish Holocaust! There is only one Holocaust, that of
the Palestinians!²⁰

16 Nordbruch, Socio-Historical Background, 3–5, 9–13, 27; for details of the affair in France,
see Valérie Igounet, Histoire du Négationisme en France (Paris, 2000), 472–83.
17 The Arab reaction to Garaudy was overwhelmingly favorable. None of those who protested
on his behalf questioned his claim that the Holocaust was a Zionist invention. His supporters
included Sheikh Muhammad Al-Tantawi of Al-Azhar University, Rafiq Hariri, former prime
minister of Lebanon, Egyptian Nobel Laureate Nadjīb Mahfouz, and the famous Arab political
commentator Muhammad Hassanin Haikal. The Arab Lawyers Federation and Palestinian
Writers Association also wrote protest letters in his favor. For the contrast between the French
and Arab reaction, see Mouna Naim, “Critiqué, jugé, sanctionnné pour ses theses en France,
l’ancien théoricien du PC, Roger Garaudy, est décoré et louangé dans les pays arabes,” Le
Monde, 1 Mar. 1998.
18 Holocaust Denial in the Middle East, 8–9.
19 See Memri, no. 225, 6 June 2001, for the details; Raphaël Israeli, “L’antisémitisme travesti
en antisionisme,” Revue d’histoire de la Shoah, Le monde juif, no. 180, special issue on
“Antisémitisme et Négationnisme dans le monde Arabo-Musulman: La Dérive.” (Jan.–June
2004): 109–71.
20 Israeli, ibid., 151.
262 Robert Solomon Wistrich

Among the statements appearing on the Al-Jazeera website and announced

before the end of the debate was one to the effect that

nothing will dissuade the sons of Zion, whom our God described as descendants of apes
and pigs, except a real Holocaust which would exterminate them in a single blow....²¹

At the end of this so-called “debate,” it emerged from an internet survey

conducted by the channel that 85% of Arab spectators watching this program
believed that Zionism was indeed worse than Nazism.
Arab Holocaust denial, unlike its Western counterparts, is undoubtedly main-
stream. In Egyptian government-subsidized newspapers like Al-Akhbar, deniers
regularly treat the Holocaust as a “swindle,” already proven by French and British
“revisionists” (such as David Irving), while regretting that Hitler did not succeed
in carrying it through to completion.²² The deniers endlessly manipulate figures
to pretend that there were less than a million Jewish victims all told; that the Jews
were a fifth column in Germany, that they were traitors and spies who had in any
case to be eliminated; that the Zionists originally inspired Hitler’s racism while
deliberately stoking up antisemitism (as stated in the doctoral dissertation of Pal-
estinian leader Abu Mazen).²³ Such a bewildering tissue of contradictions reveals
a seemingly boundless abyss of hatred.²⁴
This culture of hatred has carried over into European countries with large
Muslim populations, such as France (and to a growing extent Belgium, Holland,
Sweden, and Great Britain) where Holocaust denial or relativization fuses all too
easily with pro-Palestinism, anti-Zionism, and anti-Americanism.²⁵ The situation
in French public schools emerged as especially alarming after 2000, with pupils
from the Maghreb often rejecting any attempt to teach them about the Shoah. The
subject was negatively identified by the young Maghrébins with the established
order, with the “Zionist enemy” and the political self-interest of the Jewish com-
munity. In this immigrant milieu, far from having a beneficial pedagogical effect,

21 Ibid.
22 Al-Akhbar (Egypt), 29 Apr. 2002; Memri, special report no. 375, 2 May 2002; no. 231, 20
June 2001.
23 Abu Mazen’s doctoral thesis was defended in Moscow in 1982 and published in Arabic two
years later in Amman under the title The Secret Ties between the Nazis and the Leadership of
the Zionist Movement; on Abu Mazen’s “moderation,” see Israeli, “L’antisémitisme travesti en
antisionisme,” 165–68.
24 See the column by Rifaat Sayed Ahmed in Al-Lewaa al-Islami (Islamic banner) branding the
Holocaust as a Zionist lie to justify the founding of Israel; Jerusalem Post, 5 Aug. 2004, 6.
25 Pierre-André Taguieff, Rising from the Muck: The New Anti-Semitism in Europe (Chicago,
2004), 97–100.
 Negationism, Antisemitism, and Anti-Zionism 263

the very mention of the Holocaust has seemed to elicit violence and threats to
exterminate or burn the Jews. The importance given to the subject, if anything,
“confirmed” the widespread Muslim belief in a Jewish conspiracy or Jewish
control of the Western media. European and French sensitivity to the Shoah is
frequently linked by young Muslims to “Jewish money” and the power of the
Zionist lobby. Hence the paradox that antisemitism has risen to unprecedented
levels in France, Britain, and Europe as a whole (particularly among Muslims but
not exclusively by any means) at a time when the Shoah has never been so widely
recognized and integrated into cultural consciousness. Surely this fact should
inspire greater prudence and soul-searching among those who believe that Holo-
caust education, in and of itself, can dam up the rising antisemitic wave. On the
contrary, I would argue, there is ample evidence that it is currently serving as a
potentially dangerous boomerang against Israel and Diaspora Jewry.
If this is increasingly true in the school classroom, it is even more painfully
evident at the level of public discourse that invokes the Holocaust for political
ends. No doubt some of this malaise has its roots in the earlier postwar years, and
in the case of Eastern Europe, it reflects transparent communist manipulations
of the national memory.²⁶ All serious debate on the truth of the war years was
delayed in the former Soviet bloc until the 1990s. But in the West, Holocaust edu-
cation and growing interest in the Shoah have been a reality for a considerable
period of time. There is no convincing evidence, however, that educating young
people about the Shoah will prevent attacks on Jews; or lead to a better world, let
alone reduce racism and antisemitism.²⁷
Most dangerous for the future is not only the outright denial of the Holocaust
but its relativization and banalization through false analogies, especially with
the policies of the Jewish State. Increasingly, we see the bitter fruit of this syn-
drome across Europe, as well as on other continents. Examples of the “Nazi-Zion-
ist” amalgam abound on the internet, television, radio, in the press and the arts.
The instances I will mention are only the tip of a huge iceberg. In April 2002, the
pro-Government Center Left Greek publication, Eleftherotypia, featured a carica-
ture of a Nazi soldier, labeled with a Star of David, threatening an Arab, dressed
up like a Jewish concentration camp prisoner. The headline read “Holocaust II”
and the caption said:

The War machine of Sharon is attempting to carry out a new Holocaust, a new genocide.²⁸

26 See Manfred Gerstenfeld, Europe’s Crumbling Myths. The Post-Holocaust Origins of Today’s
Anti-Semitism (Jerusalem, 2003), 10–92.
27 Ibid., 45.
28 Eleftherotypia, 1 Apr. 2002.
264 Robert Solomon Wistrich

Such caricatures are frequent in Greece. In Italy, the well-known journalist of the
liberal daily La Stampa, Barbara Spinelli, wrote in October 2001, that

there are those, in Israel itself, who suspect that the people of Israel, in order to regenerate
itself, wish to attract new pain from future days, while dreaming of a sort of second holo-
caust.²⁹

In Spain, the leader of the left-wing Izquierda Unida, Caspar Llamazares, a con-
firmed Israel-baiter, declared that his party was fed up with the six million Jews
killed during the Holocaust. He ostentatiously announced that his comrades
would no longer participate in any homage to their memory.³⁰
The deceased Portuguese Nobel Prize winner, José Saramago, for his part
compared Ramallah to Auschwitz while on a visit to Israel several years ago.
Writing in the Spanish daily El País he subsequently described Israelis as

educated and trained in the idea that any suffering that has been inflicted, or is being
inflicted, or will be inflicted on everyone else, especially the Palestinians, will always be
inferior to that which they themselves suffered in the Holocaust. The Jews endlessly scratch
their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as
if it were a banner.³¹

In Belgium, a Catholic writer from a prominent family, Simon-Pierre Nothomb,

also visited the West Bank and was instantly reminded of Poland during the
darkest years of the war; he advised his readers that, when crossing the Gaza
Strip, they should think above all of the Warsaw Ghetto. Typically, he asked, how
such a talented people like the Jews which had suffered so many atrocities in its
history, could accept

that its government and army inflict today on others, who are not responsible for it, that
which they themselves suffered.³²

In France, even the august Le Monde could not resist the temptation in May 2002
to publish a caricature showing the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising as
identical to Jenin after the Israeli military operation. For many French intellec-

29 Barbara Spinelli, “Ebraismo senza mea culpa,” La Stampa, 31 Oct. 2001.

30 He was sharply criticized in Libertad Digital (30 Apr. 2003) for insulting the Jewish people
by spitting on the Holocaust; see Gustavo D. Perednik, “Naïve Spanish Judeophobia,” Jewish
Political Studies Review, 15, nos. 3–4 (Fall 2003): 87–110.
31 Quoted in Phyllis Chesler, The New Antisemitism (San Francisco, 2003), 119.
32 Simon-Pierre Nothomb, “L’ordre va-t-il règner à Gaza,” Le Soir, 18 Dec. 2001; for the original
French text, see Joël Kotek, La Belgique et ses Juifs, 27–28.
 Negationism, Antisemitism, and Anti-Zionism 265

tuals, especially of the “progressive” persuasion, it goes without saying that the
Shoah has to be ritually invoked when denouncing Israel’s allegedly “racist” pol-
icies. Hidden behind this obsessive analogy is a barely concealed need to under-
mine the singularity of the Holocaust and call the Jews to account.³³
In Germany, this preoccupation has been present for several decades, fea-
turing in a long series of debates about antisemitism and the burden of Holo-
caust memory on postwar German society.³⁴ After the Moelleman and Walser
Affairs (post-2000), there was the notorious effort to invert the roles of Jews and
Germans made by the Christian Democrat MP, Martin Hohmann. In October 2003
he announced that the Jews, too, were a Tätervolk (a nation of perpetrators) no
better than the Nazis themselves.³⁵ In this context, it is worth remembering the
cynical observation, made over sixty years ago: “The Germans will never forgive
the Jews for Auschwitz.”³⁶
Even in Sweden, a country in the forefront of Holocaust education, there have
also been deep ambivalences when it comes to Israel. Swedish Foreign Minister
Laila Freivalds saw fit to castigate Israelis, accusing them of behaving like Nazis
towards the Palestinians before and after an unofficial visit to Yad Vashem in
June 2004. If Israeli Jews are assumed to resemble “Nazis,” even at the higher
levels of European diplomacy, then one can only conclude that Holocaust educa-
tion has failed miserably, even among a part of Europe’s educated elites.³⁷
Much the same could be said about Great Britain, where Holocaust education
in the past ten years made considerable progress, almost in tandem with Isra-
el-bashing and the emergence of a new form of Judeophobia. Thus the Irish poet
and Oxford University professor, Tom Paulin, angrily linked the Israel Defence
Forces with the SS, the most brutal of Hitler’s executioners—and continued to
be host of a BBC arts program.³⁸ Prominent journalists like A. N. Wilson, Brian
Sewell, and Richard Ingrams have also made similarly despicable comparisons
with very little opposition. As elsewhere in Western Europe, it is no longer possi-

33 Guy Konopnicki, La Faute des Juifs (Paris, 2002), 137–38.

34 Alvin H. Rosenfeld, “Feeling Alone, Again.” The Growing Unease among Germany’s Jews
(New York: American Jewish Committee, International Perspectives, 49, 2002).
35 Richard Herzinger, “Der Fall Hohmann. Raunen, Angst und Hass,” Die Zeit, 47/2003, 13 Nov.
2003.
36 Henryk Broder, Der ewige Antisemit (Frankfurt a.M., 1987). The remark was originally made
by an Israeli psychologist, Zvi Rex, many years earlier.
37 Ilya Mayer, “Whither the White Buses?” Jerusalem Post, 18 June 2004.
38 Quoted in Winston Pickett, “Nasty or Nazi? The Use of Antisemitic Topoi by the Left-Liberal
Media,” in A New Antisemitism? Debating Judeophobia in 21st-Century Britain, edited by Paul
Iganski and Barry Kosmin (London 2003), 155–57.
266 Robert Solomon Wistrich

ble to discuss the Arab-Israeli conflict without invoking the spectre and vocabu-
lary of Auschwitz—only this time it is Jews who are depicted as the perpetrators
of genocidal crimes.³⁹ Thus, the notion that the “Zionist State” is a mirror image
of Nazism or else a racist “apartheid” state is unabashedly mainstream at many
British universities.⁴⁰ So, too, illustrations that could have been lifted from Der
Stürmer have surfaced at times in respectable British newspapers and periodi-
cals, like The Independent or the New Statesman.
This is not, of course, the crassly antisemitic Holocaust denial of the Arab
world, of the neo-Nazis, or radical right-wing extremists in Europe and America.
Such Holocaust “inversion” which has reopened so many unhealed wounds, orig-
inates in a “post-national” Europe that outwardly, at least, repudiates the Nazi
legacy, deploring all forms of racist antisemitism, warmongering, empire, and
power politics.⁴¹ For this new Europe which has become so fervently anti-Israel,
the Holocaust is the direct antithesis of its pluralist, democratic credo currently
rooted in the civic religion of human rights. The contemporary European “con-
sensus” attacks Zionism in the name of universal humanity and the rights of the
“Other,” which by some strange twist of history, appears to have become exclu-
sively Muslim and Palestinian. If, however, the Palestinian “other” is assumed to
be the absolute victim of injustice, then Israel, too, must logically be the absolute
perpetrator, the ultimate configuration of evil—literally a “Nazified” State.
This is a much more subtle form of lying about the Holocaust. It has no resem-
blance to the visions of blackshirted skinheads in jackboots yelling “Sieg Heil!”
The future of antisemitism does not belong to them but to militant Muslim immi-
grants and their “progressive” allies who have constructed a Manichean universe
where Jews who defend Israel find themselves beyond the pale. Indeed, “Zionists”
have been demonized and turned into “enemies of humanity,” the embodiment
of racism, the lackeys of a criminal State. The painful truth is that antisemitism
is back despite decades of Holocaust education, interfaith dialogue, memorials,
films, and university courses; despite the Stockholm Conference of 27 January
2000, and the creation of national Holocaust Memorial Days across the civilized
world.⁴² The antisemitic sickness has returned to haunt us and we have as yet no

39 Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Anti-Zionism in Great Britain and Beyond. A “Respectable” Anti-Semitism?

(New York: American Jewish Committee, 2004).
40 Ibid., 17.
41 Alain Finkielkraut, “In the Name of the Other: Reflections on the Coming Antisemitism,”
Azure, no. 18 (Autumn 2004): 21–33.
42 See Robert S. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession. Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad
(New York, 2010).
 Negationism, Antisemitism, and Anti-Zionism 267

obvious antidote, except the stubborn if problematic hope that eventually truth,
honesty and rationality will prevail over the would-be falsifiers of history.
Notes on Contributors
Danny Ben-Moshe is Associate Professor and Principal Research Fellow at the Centre for
Citizenship and Globalisation in the Faculty of Arts & Education, Deakin University, Melbourne.
He is the author of “Holocaust Denial in Australia,” ACTA #25 published by the Vidal Sassoon
International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, Jerusalem, 2005.

Dr. Simon Epstein teaches at the Rothberg School for Overseas Students at the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem. He is the author, among other works, of Un paradoxe français,
Antiracistes dans la Collaboration, antisémites dans la Résistance (Paris, 2008).

Professor Alain Goldschläger teaches at the University of Western Ontario (London, Canada).
In 2005 he was appointed Co-Chair of B’nai Brith Canada’s League for Human Rights, Ontario
Region. He is the author of Antisémitisme après la Shoah (Éditions Espace de Libertés,
Brussels, 2003).

Professor Jeffrey Herf teaches European History at the University of Maryland. His publications
include The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust (Harvard
University Press, 2006), which won the National Jewish Book Award and Nazi Propaganda for
the Arab World (Yale University Press, 2009), which won the German Studies Association‘s
bi-annual Prize in 2011.

Professor Rotem Kowner teaches in the Department of Asian Studies, University of Haifa. He is
the editor of Rethinking the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05: Centennial Perspectives (Folkestone,
Kent: Global Oriental \ University of Hawaii Press, 2007). His article, “The protocols in a land
without Jews: A Reconsideration” appeared in Antisemitism International, No. 3-4 (Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, 2006).

Dr. Matthias Kuentzel teaches political science at a technical college in Hamburg, Germany
and is an external research associate of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of
Antisemitism. His recent works include Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots
of 9/11 (Telos Press, New York, 2007). His most recent publication is Deutschland, Iran und die
Bombe: Eine Entgegnung - auch auf Günter Grass (Lit Verlag, 2012).

Dr. Joanna Beata Michlic is Director of the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Project on Families,
Children, and the Holocaust at Brandeis University. Her publications include Neighbors
Respond: The Controversy about Jedwabne (2004; co-edited with Antony Polonsky), and
Poland‘s Threatening Other: The Image of the Jew from 1880 to the Present (2006).

Michael Shafir is Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of European Studies, Babes-Bolyai

University, Cluj-Napoca in Romania. Among his many publications he is the author of Between
Negation and Comparative Trivialization: Holocaust Denial in Post-Communist East-Central
Europe, (Polirom, Iasi, 2002).

Professor Milton Shain is Isidore and Theresa Cohen Chair in Jewish Civilization in the
Department of Historical Studies and Director of the Isaac and Jessie Kaplan Centre for Jewish
Studies and Research at the University of Cape Town. His most recent book, co-authored with
Richard Mendelsohn is The Jews in South Africa. An Illustrated History (Jonathan Ball, 2007).
270 Notes on Contributors

Mark Weitzman is Director of Government Affairs for the Simon Wiesenthal Center. In 2003 he
co-authored with Steven L. Jacobs Dismantling the Big Lie: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
(KTAV Publishing House, Newark). The book he co-edited with Michael Fineberg and Shimon
Samuels, Antisemitism, the Generic Hatred; Essays in Memory of Simon Wiesenthal (Vallentine
Mitchell, 2007), won a National Jewish Book Award.

Professor Robert S. Wistrich holds the Neuberger Chair of Modern Jewish History at the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem and is also director of its International Center for the Study
of Antisemitism. Among his publications is the award winning study, A Lethal Obsession:
Antisemitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (Random House, 2010). His most recent book is
From Ambivalence to Betrayal. The Left, the Jews and Israel (University of Nebraska Press, 2012).
Index
Abbas, Mahmud [Abu Mazen] 20 Arabs and Israel: Conflict or Conciliation? 148
Abbé Pierre 12, 92–104 Arafat, Yasser 121, 144
Abd al-Qadar, Hatem 24 Arcand, Adrian 112, 118
Adelaide Institute 157, 159–163, 166–169, Are Martyrdom Operations Lawful According
172–173 to Quran and Sunnah? 203
Adelaide Institute Online 166, 170 Arnold, Agnieszka 76
Adevărul 38 Arrow Cross. See Hungarian National
African National Congress 146, 148 Socialist Party-Hungarianist Movement
Agursky, Mikhail 30 Arrow-Cross Nyilas 49
Ahmadinejad 21, 167, 206–207, 235–237, Aryan Nation 196, 203–205
240, 247–250, 252–254 Association of Palestinian Writers 106
Al-Agha, Hassan 22 Attempt at a Political Profile of Jozef Tiso, An
Al Hayat al-Jadeeda 22 52
Al-Azhar University 231 Auschwitz 2–4, 6, 9, 12, 17, 28, 34, 36–37,
Al-Jarwan, Seif Ali 22 40, 44–46, 70, 116, 118, 121, 124, 151,
Al-Jazeera TV 20, 261 166–167, 170, 187, 235–236, 238, 251,
Al Jihad 141 254, 259, 265–266
Al Qaeda 213, 232 Australian Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Al-Tantawi, Sheikh Muhammad 24 157–158, 161–163, 165–166, 168–169,
Al Taqwa (Fear of God) Management 203 171, 173, 175
Alexianu, Gheorghe 59 Australian Human Rights and Equal
Alliance Israélite Universelle 40 Opportunity Commission 160
Alliance of Young Democrats (FIDESZ) 47 Australian League 163
Althans, Ewald 14 Australian League of Rights 157, 158, 159
American Mercury 5 Australian Muslim News 173
Ancel, Jean 48 Australian Revisionists Conference 170
Annales dʼHistoire Révisioniste 10, 38 “Axis Broadcasts in Arabic” 214
Antall, József 45, 47 Azzam, Sheikh Nafez 25
anti-Americanism 201
Anti-Comintern Pact 183 Baader, Andreas 199
Anti-Defamation League 188 Baader-Meinhof Group. See Red Army Faction
anti-globalization 199 Babi Yar massacre 15, 28
antisemitism 195–196, 198, 201, 204–205, Banna, Hassan al- 231–232
210, 213–216, 219, 233 Bantom, Rev. William 146
in Japan 181, 184, 188, 193 Barbie, Klaus 11, 202
anti-Zionism 12, 19–20, 23, 85–90, 125, 141, Bardèche, Maurice 8, 38
145, 147–148, 152–153, 155, 171, 173, Barid as-Sarq 222
195, 205–206, 257, 262 Barnes, Harry Elmer 2, 5
Antonescu, Marshal Ion 17, 32–34, 45, 49, Ben-Dasan, Isaiah. See Yamamoto Shichihei
53, 56–59 Bender, Ryszard 37
App, Austin J. 3 Bennett, John 158, 164–165, 168, 170–171,
Arab League 231 175
Arab News 202 Berger, Obergruppenführer Gotlob 204
Arabic Study Circle 139 Bethlehem, Marlene 153
272 Index

Bin Laden, Osama 203 Cichy, Michal 74

Blair, UK Prime Minister Tony 206 Citron, Sabina 112, 127
Błoński, Jan 42, 73 Claremont Muslim Youth Association 139
Bock, Ludwig 170 Clarke, Veronika 235
Bormann, Martin 202 Clerici, Leonardo 235
Borovoy, Alan 127 Codreanu, Corneliu Zelea 32, 33
Bose, Subhas Chandra 221 Cohn-Bendit, Gabriel 10
Botting, Gary 118, 124 Coja, Ion 56
Brenner, Lenny 15 Collins, Douglas 169
British National Party 170 Combat 18 203
Brockschmidt, David 162–163, 168–169 Committee Against Antisemitism in Japan 188
Browning, Prof. Christopher 123 Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust
Brzezinski, Zbigniew 30 160, 167
Buchenwald 8 Committee for the Defense of the Good name
Buduca, Ioan 52 of Poland 44
Bungei Shunju 187, 188, 189, 190, 193 Communism Unmasked 163
Butler, Eric Dudley 157–158, 163, 169, 174 Conference on Racism 109
Butler, Richard 196, 204 Conservative Speakers Club 165, 169
Butz, Arthur 6, 10, 38, 151, 158, 170 Conspiracy: The Empire of Nietzsche 52
Buzatu, Gheorghe 53, 56 Constantiniu, Florin 48
Cooper, R. Abraham 188
Cairo, American Legation 227 Copeland, David 203
Call of Islam 142, 144 Cotler, Irwin 128
Canadian Civil Liberties Association 127 Council on American-Islamic Relations 154
Canadian Holocaust Remembrance Countess, Dr. Robert 169
Association 112 Crémieux, Gaston 85
Canadian Human Rights Act (CHRA) 127 Csurka, István 37, 47
Canadian Human Rights Tribunal 127
Canadian Jewish News 123 Dangerous Topics 36
Canberra Times 166 Davis, Judge Dennis 153
Cape Muslim Youth Movement 139 De Klerk, Prime Minister Fredrick W. 144
Cape Times 146 Deckert, Günther 13
Cape Town Holocaust Centre 150 Deedat, Achmed 148
Carol II, King 32 Degrelle, Leon 39
Carto, Willis 5, 160, 208 Delahunty, Mary 178
Cassiem, Achmat 144 DeMaria, Dr. William 168
Ceauşescu, Nicolae 17, 31–32, 49, 53, 57 Der Auschwitz-Mythos 12
Céline 8 Der erzwungene Krieg 5
Center of Marxist Studies and Research Der Stürmer 216
(CERM) 85 Deutsche National Zeitung 12
Charter of Rights and Freedoms 110, 114, 122, Deutsche Stimme 203
127, 128 Deutsche Volksunion 4
Chomsky, Noam 9, 93 Deutsches Kolleg 199
Christie, Douglas 113–117, 119, 121–125, 170 Diary of Anne Frank 122, 124, 177, 185
Christopherson, Thies 12, 118 Did Six Million Die? 7, 122
Churchill, Winston 4, 215, 228 Did Six Million Really Die? 112, 124, 151
Churchillʼs War 174 Diwald, Helmut 159
 Index 273

Douglas, C. H. 157 Friends of President Tiso in Slovakia and

Dreyfus, Capt. Alfred 99 Abroad 51
Droit de réponse 98 Front National 12, 109
Duke, David 196, 199, 210, 235
Durban Conference 260 Gabis, Tomasz 170
Ďurica, Milan S. 30 Gabriels, Sheikh Ebrahim 146
DVU 4 Garaudy, Roger 12, 23, 38–39, 85–91,
93–106, 206, 259–261
Eichmann, Adolf 8, 185, 239 Gayssot, Jean-Claude 97
Einsatzgruppen 119–120, 230 Gayssot Law 97, 104
El País 18, 264 Gazeta Wyborcza 74, 76, 80
Endecja 71 Gearson, Fr. Patrick 163
Episcopal Committee for Relations with Genoud, François 202
Judaism 98 German National Party 235
Eslami 247 Gerstein, Kurt 11
Europa 39, 40, 53 Giurescu, Dinu 48
European Humans Rights Convention 250 Glemp, Cardinal Josef 50
European-American Unity and Rights Gmurczyk, Adam 36
Organization 196 Goebbels 202, 217, 229, 233
Examiner (Tasmania) 166 Goldman, Nahum 87
Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) Gombrich, E. H. 215
176 Gomułka, Władysław 30, 70
Goodman, David 190
Faurisson, Robert 3, 9–10, 34, 38–40, 85, 88, “Government Statement for the Arabs, A “
93, 95, 101–104, 111, 118, 122, 124–125, 224
159, 170, 174, 206, 235, 260 Gowin, Jarosław 79
Felderer, Ditlieb 118, 124 Graf, Jürgen 170, 172, 206
Fight or Flight: the Personal Face of Grand Manipulator, The 59
Revisionism 160 Grawitz, Lara 153
Filderman, R. Wilhelm 58 Gray, Justice Charles 4
Final Report 48 Greater Romania Party 34
“Final Solution” 104 “Greatest Taboo, The” 187, 190
Finkelstein, Norman 16, 78, 178 GRECE 87
Finkielkraut, Alain 105, 258 Green March, The 171
Fiore, Roberto 36 Griffin, Nick 170
Focal Point 167 Griffiths, Peter 113–115, 117–118
Focal Point Publications 125 Gross, Jan T. 43, 67
Fodor, Janos 38 Guillaume, Pierre 10, 11, 38, 88
Foreign Ministry German 223 Gulag 10, 14
Foreign Office Political Division 221 Györkös, István 37
Founding Myths of Israeli Politics, The 38–39,
89–90, 96, 98, 101, 105–106, 261 Haikal, Mohammed Hassanin 24
Fourth Reich 199 Hajdenberg, Henri 94
Foxman, Abraham 188 Hale, Natt 196
French Communist Party (PCF) 85–86 Hamas 146, 213
Fresco, Nadine 178 Hamshahri 251
Friedrich, Christof. See Zündel, Ernst Hanada Kazuyoshi 187, 189
274 Index

Hand That Signed the Paper, The 178 Hosokawa Morihiro 192
Hariri, Rafik 24 Höss, Rudolf 2
Haron, Imam Abdullah 139 Hoxha, Enver 31
Harwood, Richard 7, 38, 151 HSĽS 51
Hata Tsutomu 192 Huber, Achmed 202
Hegazi, Mohammed 172 Hull, Cordell 227
Hezbollah 213, 259 Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Hilberg, Prof. Raul 115, 123 Commission (HREOC) 163, 172, 176
Historikerstreit 14 Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) 47
History of the Great Patriotic War 28 Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIÉP) 47
Hitler, Adolph 2, 4–5, 7, 10, 13, 52, 58, 99, Hungarian National Socialist Party-Hun-
113–114, 118, 121, 124, 132, 148, 150, garianist Movement 37
187, 195, 202, 205, 215–219, 223, Hungarian Peopleʼs Welfare Alliance (MNSZ)
225–226, 229–230, 232–233, 237–238, 37
240, 248–249, 262 Hunnia Füzetek 35, 38
Hitlerʼs Germany: Will History Repeat? 168 Husseini, Haj Amin al- 202, 205, 221,
Hitler We Love and Why, The 118, 123 225–226, 229, 231
Hlinka Guard 51
Hlinka Slovak People’s Party (HSĽS 50 Iliescu, Pres. Ion 17, 35, 49
Hô Kôshi. See Yasue, Norihiro Imam 247
Hoax of the Twentieth Century, The 6, 151, 158 Institute for Historical Review
Hoffmann, Gabriel 55 Institute for Historical Review (IHR) 5,
Hoggan, David 5 159–160, 166–167, 169–170, 186, 205,
Holland, Derek 36 208–209
Holocaust 1–3, 6–7, 11–12, 15–18, 22–24, International Islamic University in Malaysia
27–29, 32, 34–35, 37–39, 42, 44–52, 173
54–57, 67–76, 78, 83–84, 96, 109, International Jew, The 162
111–116, 120, 122–123, 125–126, International League against Antisemitism 9
129, 148, 150–151, 157–158, 161, 163, International League Against Racism and
166–168, 170–171, 175, 177, 185, Antisemitism (LICRA) 93
189–190, 193, 195, 198, 207, 209–210, Inuzuka Koreshige 182
216–217, 219, 233, 236, 240–241, 257, Iorga, Nicolae 57
261, 263–265 Iran 213
Holocaust denial 1–2, 4–5, 10–12, 14, 16, Iron Guard 49, 57
18–21, 23, 25, 27, 32, 34, 36, 110, Irving, David 124, 131, 165, 168, 174–175, 178,
118–119, 130, 151–152, 155, 157–161, 205, 262
163–165, 167, 171–174, 176–179, Islam 223, 232
185–190, 193, 196, 205–209, 235–236, Islam Propagation Centre International 139,
238–239, 249–254, 258, 259, 260, 148
262–263, 266 Islamic Mission 139
Holocaust Industry, The 16, 78, 178 Islamic Unity Convention 144, 145
Holocaust International Cartoon Contest 251 Israel Affair, The 90
Holocaust Review Press 167
Holocaust revisionism 132, 169 Jankélévitch, Vladimir 257
Honsik, Gerd 261 Jasenovac 54
Horani, Abdallah 24 Jedwabne 43–44, 50, 67–68, 75, 77, 80–83
Horthy, Adm. Miklós 17, 32, 34, 45 Jewish Board of Deputies 146, 153
 Index 275

Jewish Community Council of Victoria 177 Leers, Johann von 202

Jewish conspiracy 197 Legiune 49
Jewish Far East Council 182 Les assassins de la mémoire 95
Jewish Historical Institute 74 Les Mythes Fondateurs de la politique
John Paul II, Pope 39 Israélienne 12
Journal of Historical Review 5, 159 Letz, Róbert 52
Leuchter Report 4, 36, 39, 166, 176
Keegstra, James 118 Leuchter, Fred 3, 124, 125
Keiichiro, Prof. Kobori 185 Lévy, Bernard-Henry 100
Kertész, Imre 17 Lewis, Prof. Bernard 148, 241
Khamenei, Ayatollah Ali 21, 238, 259 LICA 9, 85, 94, 99
Khan, Darwood 148 LICRA 94
Khilani, Rashid Ali al- 221, 225–226, 229 Ligue des droits de lʼhomme [League for
Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah 140, 237, Human Rights] 97
242–247 Lipstadt, Deborah 4
Kiesinger, Kurt 221 Literárny týždennik 51
“KILL THE JEWS BEFORE THEY KILL YOU” 229 Lock Stock and Barrel 176
Kimura Aiji 193 Locke, Judge Hugh 113–114, 122–123
Kirk, U.S. Ambassador Alexander 214, 227 Loeb, Kuhn and Company 182
Kirschbaum, Dr. Jozef M. 51 Luceafărul 47
Kitchko, Trofim 86
Klarsfeld, Serge 94 Mach, Alexander 51
Kohl, Chancellor Helmut 13 Mahler, Horst 199, 200–202, 206
Kopanski, Prof. A. B. 173 Majdanek 3, 28
Kopelowitz, Seymour 146 Manolescu, Prof. Nicolae 38
Korneev, Lev 15 Marco Polo 187–189, 191
Krege, Richard 166 Marco Polo affair 185–186, 193–194
Kula, Marcin 75 Marr, Rev. Ronald 118
Kula, Witold 72 Mashʼal, Khalid 20
Kunszabó, Ferenc 38 Mawdudi, Abdul A‘la 139
Kwaśniewski, Pres. Aleksander 44, 76, 80 McMurty, Atty. Gen. Roy 112
McWilliams, Jameel 150–151
LʼAffaire Israël 87 Media Review Network 154
LʼEvénement du Jeudi 100 Meiji, Emperor 182
lʼHumanité 86 Mein Kampf 52, 219
La Palestine 87 Meir, Golda 87
La Vieille Taupe 10, 88, 91, 96 Mişcarea 38, 56
Lachout, Emil 170 MJC 141, 152, 154
Le Canard enchaîné 95 Moczar, Gen. Mieczysław 30, 71
Le Drame des Juifs Européens 8 Mohammed Reza Shah 243
Le Mensonge dʼUlysse 8, 120 Mohammed, Sheikh Nazeem 143
Le Monde 105 Monde des livres 91
Le Pen, Jean-Marie 12, 46, 92, 96, 97, 98, 109 Mónus, Aron 52
League of Polish Families 44, 161–162, 166, Morning Herald (Sydney) 173
168–169, 173–175 Mottaki, Manouchehr 21, 236
Lecache, Bernard 9, 85, 88, 99 Mousa, Ibraheem 143, 149
Lederman, Charles 97 Movement for Romania 38
276 Index

Munzel, Kurt 222 New Times Survey 165

Muriden, Geoff 163, 175 Niedziela 76
Muslim Brotherhood 202, 231, 233 Nihonjin to Yudayajin (The Japanese and the
Muslim Judicial Council 141, 143, 146 Jews) 183
Muslim News 139–141 Nishioka Masanori 187, 189
Muslim Outlook 138 Nolte, Ernst 14
Muslim Students Association 140, 142 Notin, Bernard 11
Muslim Views 150, 154, 155 NPD 199, 202
Muslim Youth Movement 140–142 Nuremberg ou la Terre Promise 8
Myatt, Abdul-Aziz Ibn. See Myatt, David Nuremberg trials 116
Myatt, David 203–204
My Awakening 197 Office for Political Radio 221, 225
MYM 154 Office of Racial Politics 220
Myśl Polska 76 Office of Strategic Services 227, 231
Myth of the Holocaust, The 36 Office of War Information 227
Myth of the Six Million, The 5, 7, 151 Office of War Information, U.S. 214
Mythes fondateurs de la politique israélienne Ogmios 10
88 “Oh Mohammedaner!” 223
Omar Amin. See Leers, Johann von
Nagafuchi Ichirô 184 Omar, Imam Rashied 146
Nagano Shigeto 192 On Target 165, 169
Najwyższy Czas 76 Orbán, Viktor 45–47
Nanjing (Nanking) Massacre 191–192 Orient Post 222
Nasser, Gamal Abdul 87, 202 Orłowski, Rev. Edward 77, 81
Nasz Dziennik 76 Other Side, The 20
National Alliance 196 “Our Struggle with the Jews” 232
National Front 97
National Front of Young Iranian Muslims 245 Padányi, Viktor 38, 55
National Front UK 7 Palestine 90
National Liberal Party (PNL) 38 Palestine Islamic Solidarity Committee 140
National Revival of Poland 36 Pan-Africanist Congress 137
Nationalisme et République 88 Pánis, Stanislav 34
National-Radical Camp 36 Paraz, Albert 8
National-Radical Institute 36 Party of National Unity 51
National-Socialist Christian Party 112 Party of Social Democratic Unity 39
“National-Socialist Guide to Understanding Patrice, Jean [pseud.]. See Gearson, Fr.
Islam” 203 Patrick
Neacşu, Ilie 53 Păunescu, Sen. Adrian 50
negationism see also Holocaust, Holocaust Pavelić, Ante 16, 32, 45, 54
denial 11–12, 18, 27, 32, 34, 36, 39, 41, Pavlo, L‘udovit 32
44, 49, 53, 56, 60, 85, 90, 93, 95–97, Pearson, John 123, 125
99, 101 Pellepoix, Darquier de 9
Neighbors. See Gross, Jan T. 62, 67–68, 72, Pember, Graham 169, 171
74–76, 78, 81–82, 84 People against Gangsterism and Drugs
Neturei Karta 235, 236, 248 (PAGAD) 137, 145, 149
New Orleans Protocol 196, 197 Pierce, Dr. William 196, 199, 205–206
New Right 87 Pippidi, Andrei 48
 Index 277

Pittner, Ladislav 52 Research and Study Group for European

Pius XII, Pope 152 Civilization. See GRECE
PLO 146 Review of the Holocaust: Global Vision 235
Polaković, Stefan 50 Révision 11
Polish National Commonwealth-Polish Reza Shah 243
National Party 35 Right National Party 37
Politica 38 Rocques, Henri 261
Popescu, Christian Tudor 38 România mare 52, 56
Practical Guide to Aryan Revolution, A 203 Romania, the Great Victim of World War Two
Pressac, Jean-Claude 4, 121 48
PRM 33, 35, 38–39, 49, 52, 56. See Greater Romania, the World and the Jews 40
Romania Party Romanian League for the Struggle Against
Profession: Neo-Nazi 14 Anti-Romanianism 57
propaganda 217–218, 220–221, 224, 228, Romhányi, László 38
231, 233 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 215, 228
Protocols of the Elders of Zion 16, 21, 91, 99, Rossler, Eric 171
110, 139, 147, 154, 161–162, 181–184, Rudolf Report 13
197, 208, 210, 233, 245, 247 Rudolf, Germar 13, 170
Przebindowski, Maciej 36 Rydzyk, Rev. Tadeusz 17
Puncte cardinale 38
SA Jewish Report 153
Qibla 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146 Sabri, Mufti Ikrima 22, 259
Qurʼan 223, 224, 232 Şafran, R. Alexandru 59–60
Qutb, Sayyid 139, 232 Sankei Shimbun 186
Schiff, Jacob H. 181
Racial Hatred Act (1995) 160, 176 Schmidt, Maria 46
Radical Front for the Liberation of Palestine Scully, Olga 162, 163, 176
202 Search for Truth in History, The 175
Radio Berlin 224 Sedick, Sheikh Achmat 146, 152
Radio Islam 20, 171, 205 Shariʼati, Ali 140, 142
Radio Maryja 17 Sharon, Ariel 155
Radziłów 43 Shillony, Prof. Ben-Ami 184
Rafsanjani, Ali Akbar Hashemi 23, 237, 261 Shoah. See Holocaust
Rahimian, Mohammad Hassan 238 Shukan Kinyôbi 193
Rami, Ahmed 20, 170, 205 Simon Wiesenthal Center 188
Rampton, QC Richard 4 Six Million Swindle, The 3, 151
Rapp, Austin Joseph 151 Skarżyska, Krystyna 79
Rareş, Silviu 38 Slovak Liberation Committee 50
Rasool, Ebrahim 142, 147 Slovak National Party 34
Rassinier, Paul 7–8, 10, 38, 85, 88, 96, 104, Slovak National Unity Party 34
118, 120 Smith, Bradley 18, 160, 167
Ratajczak, Dariusz 36 Smith, Mervyn 153
“Real Evil Spirit, The” 202 Social Democratic Alliance 79
Red Army Faction 199 South African Non-Governmental
Remer, Otto Ernst 13 Organization Coalition 153
Representative Council of Jewish Institutions Spearhead 7
in France (CRIF) 94 Spotlight, The 5
278 Index

Stäglich, Wilhelm 12, 261 UFOs: Nazi Secret Weapons? 123

Stalin 10, 95, 215 UN Human Rights Council 254
Stancyk 170 Underground Film Festival 174
Štítničan, Jozef 51 Unia Wolności 79
Stokarska, Sen. Jadwiga 81 Union of Orthodox Synagogues 145
Stola, Dariusz 42 Unit 731 191
Stormfront 204 United Democratic Front (UDF) 141–143
Strategy, The 162, 169, 171 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights
Sydney Institute 161 114
Szabó, Albert 37 United Nations World Conference against
Szálasi, Ferenc 32 Racism, Racial Discrimination,
Szczerbiec 36 Xenophobia and Related Intolerances
Szent Korona 35, 38 (WCAR) 152
United States National Archives 214
Taguieff, Pierre-André 100 Universal Truth Movement 139
Tanaka Kengo 189 Uno Masami 185
Tanzeem e-islami 202 Uprising 174
Technique and Operation of the Gas Ustasha 54
Chambers 4
Tehran Times 171 Vambery, Arminius 241
Tejkowski, Bolesław 35 Vergès, Jacques 11, 93, 104
Temps modernes 105 Veritas 174, 175
Tepulchowski, Boris 28 Verrall, Richard. See Harwood, Richard
Theodoru, Radu 35, 39–41, 52–53, 56 Victorian Council of Civil Liberties (VCCL) 159
Thion, Serge 9, 10 Victorian Racial and Religious Tolerance Act
Thomas, Justice Ronald 123, 125 177
Thorez, Maurice 85 Vidal-Naquet, Pierre 28, 95, 100
Tishreen 22 Vrba, Prof. Rudolf 115
Tiso, Rev. Josef 16, 30, 32–33, 45, 50–52
Toben, Frederick 159, 161, 164–168, 170–173, Walendy, Udo 38, 118, 124
175–177, 210, 235 Wałęsa, Lech 44
Toronto Mayorʼs Committee on Community Walus, Frank 118
and Race Relation 127 Wannsee Conference 2, 164
Toronto Star 123 War Behind The War, The 163
Treblinka 28, 166 Wastelands of Historical Reality 16
Trial of Israeli Zionism: Unmasking the Wastelands of Historical Truth 54
International Zionist Conspiracy, The 39 WCAR 153
Tripartite Pact 183 WCC. See World Council of Churches
Truth Missions 161 Weber, Charles 118, 124, 170
Tuck, Pickney 227 Weber, Mark 170, 208
Tudjman, Franjo 16, 54–55 Weil, Simone 97
Tudor, Corneliu Vadim 34, 39 Weizmann, Dr. Chaim 14, 90
Tuka, P.M. Vojtech 51 West, War and Islam, The 112, 121
Tygodnik Głos 76 Western Canada Concept 113
Tygodnik Powszechny 74, 76, 80 White Revolution 203, 204
“Why Islam is our Ally” 204
U. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum 17, 50 Wielka Encyklopedia Powszechna 71
 Index 279

Wojtyła, Karol. See John Paul II Young Egypt 231

World Church of the Creator 196 Young Menʼs Muslim Association 139
World Conference on Religion and Peace 146 Your Rights 159, 165–166, 169
World Council of Churches 141
World Jewish Congress 87 Zach, Christa 48
World War II 1, 3, 5, 8, 11, 15–16, 29, 38, 46, Zaki, Yaqub 148
48, 56, 85, 88, 90–92, 97, 101, 112, 129, Zionism 204, 219
131, 183, 190, 216–218, 220, 227–229, Zionism in the Age of the Dictators 15
233–234 Zionist Nazism 40
World Zionist Organization 87 Zmena 52
Wprost 80 Zündel, Ernst 3, 18, 38, 110–118, 120–127,
129–132, 160, 170, 176
Yamamoto Shichihei 183 Zündelsite 127
Yassin, Sheikh Ahmed 146 Życie 76
Yasue, Norihiro [Senko] 182 Źyciński, Abp. Józef 77
Yevtushenko, Evgenii 28