Holocaust denial can be defined as the rejection of the main facts of the extermination of the Jews in World War II. One frequently heard statement is that the majority of them died of illnesses contracted in the death camps. Another argument central to denial is that the Nazis did not plan to kill all Jews. A third often-heard claim is that even if there was such a plan, there is no proof that Hitler knew about the crimes committed against the Jews.

The essence of Holocaust denial can be summarized in one sentence of the Holocaust-denier David Irving: “more women died in the backseat of Edward Kennedy’s car at Chappaquiddick than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz.”1 One category of distortion closely linked to Holocaust denial and often overlapping with it is “minimalization” or “depreciation” of the Holocaust. This means claiming that far fewer Jews were murdered during that period than the generally agreed-upon figure of around six million.

These types of distortion were publicized almost immediately after the end of the war. Maurice Bardèche, a French fascist, asserted that people had only died in concentration camps because of war-related events but not because they were murdered. He claimed that when the Germans spoke about the “Final Solution of the Jewish problem,” they meant that the Jews would be transferred to ghettos in Eastern Europe. Bardèche also said the gas chambers were used to “disinfect” the concentration camps’ inmates and not to kill them.2

Several of the initial Holocaust deniers were French. Paul Rassinier, who had been a communist before the war and later became a socialist, had been a member of the French Resistance. He was arrested and interned in concentration camps, among them Buchenwald. In 1948 he published a book, Crossing the Line, in which he argued that while people had been killed in camps, the perpetrators had acted on their own and not on orders from above.3

Another well-known French Holocaust denier was Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, who had been the Vichy government’s commissioner of Jewish affairs for several years. In a 1978 interview, he told the French weekly L’Express that the Holocaust was a hoax and only lice were gassed at Auschwitz.4

Robert Faurisson is a well-publicized French Holocaust denier who taught literature at Lyons 3 University. He became the inspiration for several Holocaust deniers in other countries.5 In later years there were also several other Holocaust- distortion incidents at that university. In 2001, the French minister of national education Jack Lang appointed a commission headed by the historian Henry Rousso to investigate racism and Holocaust denial at Lyons 3. The resulting report analyzes a number of such cases in detail.6

Ahmadinejad Gives New Impetus

Holocaust deniers were largely marginal figures in society and for a long time were expected to remain so. President Ahmadinejad has, however, given a new impetus to Holocaust denial. He was the first head of state to say the Holocaust did not happen.

Ahmadinejad started his public Holocaust denial in December 2005 when he gave a press conference in Mecca. He attended an extraordinary meeting there of the fifty-seven members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. The conference was devoted to the Muslim world’s need to fight — according to Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal — against sentiments of hatred toward Islam. It was meant to be a show of Muslim moderation toward the outside world.

On 8 December, Ahmadinejad said: “Certain European countries insist on saying that Hitler has killed millions of Jews in gas chambers. They go so far as to say that whoever states the contrary must be condemned and thrown into prison.” He denied that the Holocaust had occurred: “We do not believe this assertion, but even if it were true, we ask the Europeans the following question: is the murder of innocent Jews by Hitler the reason for the support of the occupiers of Jerusalem?” Ahmadinejad added: “The Europeans should offer part of their territory, from Germany, Austria, or other countries, so that the Jews can install their state there.”7

On 13 December, Ahmadinejad repeated his Holocaust denial in Zahedan in southeastern Iran. There he also said the Europeans “created a myth in the name of the Holocaust and valued that higher than God, religion and the prophets.”8 This speech was broadcast on Iranian television. Since then Ahmadinejad and other Iranian officials have expressed several variations on the same core motif. As mentioned earlier, Holocaust denial is a central element in the genocidal expressions toward Israel by the president of Iran.

Teheran Conference and Cartoon Competition

A conference supposedly for the study of the Holocaust, but in fact focusing on its denial and minimization, was held on 11–12 December 2006 in Teheran. It was titled the “International Conference on Review of the Holocaust Global Vision.” This conference was one more step in Ahmadinejad’s genocidal strategy against Israel. The organizer was the Foreign Office’s Iranian Institute for Political and International Studies (IPIS), headed by Rasul Mosavi.

The conference was opened by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who said that questioning the Holocaust is one more way of attacking the United States, along with others such as criticizing the U.S. presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.9 He also claimed that “if the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt. And if, during this review, it is proved that the Holocaust was a historical reality, then what is the reason for the Muslim people of the region and the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis’ crimes?”10

Cartoons are often an effective tool in understanding the essence of an issue. In August 2006, a Holocaust cartoon competition opened in Teheran. It was organized by the leading Iranian daily Hamashahri, owned by the Teheran municipality.

The cartoonist A-Chard of France won a shared second prize for a caricature expressing Holocaust denial. It showed a panel of smoking gas chambers lying on the ground. Written on its side was “The myth of the gas chambers.” An ultra- Orthodox Jew asks, “Who has put it on the ground?” and somebody answers, “Faurisson.” A-Chard is a regular cartoonist for Rivarol, a French extreme-Right publication.11

Muslim Promoters of Holocaust Denial

Like all other major motifs of anti-Semitism, Holocaust denial has been promoted for many decades in the Arab and Muslim world. Nordbruch has analyzed the sociohistorical background of such denial in Arab countries. He points out that both Holocaust denial and revisionism are common, writing: “Far from being an argument applied temporarily within the Arab-Israeli conflict, various forms of Holocaust denying statements remain widespread.”12 He sees Holocaust denial as a binding element between different Arab political groups.13 It “has to be explained within the context of more general ideological developments.”14

Holocaust denial is widespread in Egypt as well, despite its being at peace with Israel. For instance, in 2005 Mohammed Mahdi Akef, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition party, said the Holocaust was a myth. He added: “Western democracies have slammed all those who don’t see eye to eye with the Zionists regarding the myth of the Holocaust.”15 This text was published on the Brotherhood’s official website.

During the same week the website carried an article by another leading Brotherhood member, Gaber Komeha. He claimed that the 1966 execution of the leading postwar ideologist of the Muslim Brotherhood, Sayed Qutb, by the Egyptian regime of President Gamal Abdel Nasser, was a “Holocaust.”16

Sheikh Zayed

One well-known Arab sponsor of Holocaust denial was the late Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan al-Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates. This gained much attention when a student, Rachel Fish, fought his promised donation to Harvard Divinity School, which ultimately led to its withdrawal. Sheikh Zayed had become the dictatorial ruler of the emirate of Abu Dhabi in 1966 and established a think tank called the Zayed Center of Coordination and Follow-up.

“Based in Abu Dhabi, the Zayed Center was headed by the deputy prime minister, Sheikh Zayed’s son. It was established in 1999 as the official think tank of the Arab League…and it represented, according to its website, ‘the fulfillment of the vision of the President of U.A.E. His Highness, Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan al-Nahyan.’”17

The Zayed Center has promoted Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism, anti- American conspiracy theories, and hate speech in its lectures, symposia, and publications. The Los Angeles Times quoted the center’s director as saying: “Jews are the enemies of all nations.”18 Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter was one of those who lectured at the Zayed Center.19

Furthermore, in 1998, Zayed’s wife donated $50,000 to the defense of Holocaust-denier Roger Garaudy in a French court. In his book The Founding Myths of Modern Israel, Garaudy maintained that there was no Nazi program of genocide during World War II and that Jews had fabricated the Holocaust.20

Holocaust Denial among Israeli Arabs

A May 2009 poll by the University of Haifa showed both how profound Holocaust denial is even among Israeli Arabs and that it is expanding. It was found that over 40 percent of Israeli Arabs believe the Holocaust never happened, while in 2006 this was the case for 28 percent.21

Historian Mikael Tossavainen considers that as Holocaust denial has developed and been refined internationally, the new forms of more sophisticated denial have also reached the Arab world. Outright denial of the Holocaust is something best kept for preaching to the faithful. When in mixed company, Holocaust deniers have developed a more sophisticated strategy which runs less of a risk of alienating their audiences. This strategy, cultivated internationally as well as in the Arab world, aims at minimizing the Holocaust, either by arguing that the Germans had no genocidal intent, and that Jews were not targeted qua Jews, or by minimizing the number of Jewish victims.22

He mentions that, in the Arab world, state-controlled media also propagate Holocaust denial. In 2004, the paper Al-Liwaa Al-Islami, of Egypt’s ruling National Democratic Party, published two articles by Dr. Rif’at Sayyed Ahmad who asserted that there had been no Holocaust. He wrote that there was no plan to kill the Jews and they were not targeted more than any other people.23

In 1983, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas published a book in Arabic titled The Other: The Secret Relations between Nazism and the Leadership of the Zionist Movement, based on his doctoral dissertation at Moscow Oriental College. In this book he denied that gas chambers were used to murder Jews, basing himself on Faurisson. He also claimed falsely that many scholars said the number of Jewish victims was a few hundred thousand.24

Other Countries

Holocaust deniers express their views publicly in many countries. For instance, there are three organizations in Australia for which “Holocaust denial is a central belief: the Australian League of Rights, the Australian Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Adelaide Institute.”25

These organizations have chosen rather neutral and inoffensive names to render a certain air of respectability to their work. This is a common strategy, also reflected in the American-based Journal of Historical Review, whose only purpose, in fact, is to spread Holocaust denial.26

There are also individual Holocaust deniers who do not operate in an organizational framework. One of them was the late world chess champion Bobby Fischer. This notorious anti-Semite of Jewish ancestry wrote on his website, “The so-called ‘Holocaust’ of the Jews during World War II is a complete hoax!… It never happened.”27

The Lipstadt Trial

 A London court case became a landmark in the battle against Holocaust denial. The historian Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher Penguin Books were the defendants in a trial initiated by the Holocaust distorter and historical writer David Irving. Irving claimed that they had participated in a “conspiracy” to ruin his career. Lipstadt had stated that Irving knew the evidence about the Holocaust period but distorted it until it coincided with his ideological leanings and political agenda.28 Irving had been found guilty by a German court in 1992, having declared at a 1990 public meeting in Munich that there had been no gas chambers at Auschwitz. After this verdict he was banned from Germany, and has since been refused entry to several other countries including Canada. Another of his central theses was that Hitler neither ordered nor approved the murder of the Jews. Irving further claimed that, for a long time, Hitler knew nothing about the killings and that those

Germans who murdered Jews did so without authorization.

Irving further asserted that at most six hundred thousand Jews had been killed in the Holocaust and that Auschwitz was not a death camp but a slave-labor camp with a high mortality rate. This, and the huge death toll at Treblinka, were due to natural causes, such as typhus epidemics. In these positions he displayed all the key elements of Holocaust denial. Beyond that, Lipstadt also mentioned that Irving referred to the Jews as “the traditional enemies of the truth.”

Judge Charles Grey, in an over-three-hundred-page judgment in April 2000, described Irving as an anti-Semite who had “for his own ideological reasons, persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence.” He ruled that Holocaust denial can be defined as the rejection of the main facts of the extermination of the Jews in World War II. Grey also ruled that Lipstadt and the publisher had justified their claims.29

Motivations of the Deniers

The proceeding and its aftermath gave Lipstadt the opportunity to expose not only Irving’s methodology but also his motivations. In an interview she said:

He apparently loved the Nazis enough to actually want to reestablish National Socialism as a viable political system…. Irving realized that a pre-condition for Nazism’s resurrection was to strip and wash it of its worst elements. The first important tool to accomplish this was the creation of immoral equivalencies. For instance, in the same breath, one mentions that, while the Nazis bombarded London in 1940 the Allies bombed Germany in 1945.30

The aim of many deniers is probably to rehabilitate the Third Reich or even to repeat Nazi crimes. The historical facts about the Holocaust are a hindrance to this. Casting doubt on them is thus essential. Lipstadt says that other false claims may include, for instance, that crimes were not committed mainly by Germans but by others “such as Estonians, Latvians, Ukrainians, as well as some rogue Germans.”

Another “supporting argument” is that toward the end of the war the Germans could not take care of the people detained in the camps because the Allies had bombed the roads toward them. This explains, according to deniers, why the survivors looked so terrible in the pictures. Lipstadt observes: “The final step in denial methodology concerns atrocities which simply cannot be excused by any of the above stratagems; hence they must be denied.”31

The Holocaust-denial propaganda emanating from Iran may influence anti- Israeli Westerners in various directions. This is explored by Dave Rich in an essay in the second part of this book. He writes:

It is the utility of Holocaust denial as an anti-Zionist propaganda weapon that leaves European leftists vulnerable to Iranian encouragement to challenge the scale, nature, meaning, and consequences of the Holocaust. This is not the usual dynamic of anti-Zionism leading to anti-Semitism; this is anti- Semitism being used to generate anti-Zionism, which could profoundly affect the direction and tone of anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic activity in the West.32

Holocaust Minimalization

Holocaust minimalization, also called “depreciation” or “downscaling,” refers to belittling the severity of the Holocaust. Jean Marie Le Pen, leader of the National Front Party in France, for instance, has expressed such attitudes a number of times.33

At the beginning of 2008, he was given a three-month suspended sentence and was also fined for calling the Nazi occupation of France “not particularly inhumane.” Le Pen made this comment in a 2005 interview with the earlier- mentioned Rivarol.34 By that time he had been convicted at least six times for racism or anti-Semitism. Le Pen had also called the Nazi gas chambers “a detail of the history of World War II.”35

Holocaust denial and minimalization are more widespread phenomena than is commonly known. An Italian poll by Paolo Merulla in fall 2003 found that 10 percent of Italians think Jews are lying when they say that Nazism murdered millions of Jews.36

Another example of Holocaust minimalization was found by a 2003 poll of two thousand young Italians (aged fourteen to eighteen). Sponsored by the umbrella organization of Italian Jewry under the auspices of Italy’s President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, it showed that a significant percentage of Italian youth held beliefs based on anti-Semitic stereotypes. For instance, more than 17 percent of those polled believed that reports of the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust were “exaggerated.”37

Methods of Distribution

Michael Whine, a senior executive of the Community Security Trust of Great Britain observes that the media for promoting denial had been revamped in light of technological advances, just as the nature of the propaganda itself was changing. New forms of this propaganda encompassed pseudoscientific books and papers; crude denial material, usually published in leaflet form by small neo-Nazi groups; and what can be called political denial, which includes the most recent and increasingly potent source, namely, Islamists as well as Internet and television transmissions within some Muslim states.38

Whine observes that an increasing amount of Holocaust-denial propaganda comes from the Middle East. It is being transmitted primarily through the Internet, and also through print media and television. This, in turn, appears to be encouraging the far Right in several countries to resume promoting denial after a lull of several years, and even after the criminal convictions of some of its earlier proponents.39

He adds that a major challenge of “online Holocaust denial is one of jurisdiction, even if states have laws that criminalize it…. But jurisdictions stop at states’ borders. Hence, denial and racist sites have relocated to jurisdictions where no supervisory regime exists or where there are no legal sanctions.”40

Facebook

In May 2009, a discussion developed about the frequent appearance of Holocaust denial on Facebook. At that time Facebook was encountering mounting criticism in many countries because they had refused to ban Holocaust-denial groups from the site. Facebook started to remove Holocaust-denial content in countries where it is illegal, such as Israel and Germany.

Facebook defended itself by saying that the goal of its policies “is to strike a very delicate balance between giving Facebook users the freedom to express their opinions and beliefs — even those that are controversial or that we may find repulsive — while also ensuring that individuals and groups of people do not feel threatened or endangered.”41

Andre Oboler, an expert on online anti-Semitism, commented:

Facebook has demonstrated once again that it is media pressure and not its own Terms of Service or ethical deliberations that cause action to be taken against online hate. The company has watered down the provisions against various types of hateful content and dropped its promise to provide a “safe place on the internet.” Most alarmingly, despite still prohibiting hateful content, Facebook has decided as policy to allow Holocaust denial on the platform. This demonstrates a lack of understanding regarding anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial in particular, and a lack of engagement with the problem of anti-Semitism 2.0.42

Denial Continues

In the meantime Holocaust denial has been going on in many places, of which only some examples can be given. In 2006, a Holocaust denier named Larry Darby was the runner-up in the Democratic primary for Alabama attorney-general. In the vote, held on 6 June, he received 44 percent.

Darby had claimed that no more than 140,000 Jews died in the Holocaust. He added that there was no evidence of the mass extermination of Jews. In 2005, he had organized a meeting at which Irving was the keynote speaker.43

On 26 May 2009, TV2, Norway’s largest commercial television station, devoted more than fifteen minutes to an interview with Irving.44 The station paid for his travel and hotel costs.45 The journalist who interviewed him seemed to have little knowledge of the subject.

Bernt Hagtvedt, a Norwegian scholar, wrote that true Holocaust scholars are not flashy enough compared to Irving. He added: “Moreover there are no longer journalists [in Norway] who know enough to interview them…. There are journalists who are so lacking in knowledge that they only drift with the tide like seaweed, carried by the latest fashion…. Unnoticeably the decay in the Norwegian media had advanced so far as to allow Irving to dominate for days on end.”46

The Williamson Affair

One occurrence of Holocaust denial in 2009 received so much international exposure that it can serve as a case study for both this distortion method and society’s reactions to it. It also shows that, while we live in times of a major erosion in values, we have not yet reached a situation where “everything goes.”

In January 2009, Pope Benedict XVI lifted the excommunication of four bishops who had been consecrated by the ultraconservative Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre. This was part of the pope’s effort to end the conflict with the Society of St. Pius X, founded by Lefebvre, of which these bishops were spiritual leaders. One of them was the Holocaust-denier Richard Williamson.

In an interview broadcast on Swedish TV on 21 January 2009, Williamson had said that no Jews were gassed during the Holocaust and added that the number of those killed was not six million but about two hundred to three hundred thousand. Williamson had questioned the Holocaust earlier as well.47

The ADL stated that Williamson had declared that “Jews made up the Holocaust, Protestants get their orders from the devil and the Vatican has sold its soul to liberalism.” This led to a number of condemnations, initially mainly from Jewish sources. There had already been much criticism earlier when the pope had readmitted the Latin Mass so as to accommodate the St. Pius X Society.48

The Williamson Holocaust-denial case rapidly caused outrage in wide circles internationally, including among some Catholics. French president Nicolas Sarkozy, a Catholic, criticized Williamson but did not refer to the role of the Vatican. He said: “It is incredible, shocking and inadmissible to be able to find in the 21st century somebody who dares question the gas chambers, the Holocaust, the martyrdom of Jews. It is inadmissible.”49 German chancellor Angela Merkel also condemned the Vatican.50

Reactions to Denial

The hope of those who thought the Lipstadt trial would once and for all push Holocaust denial even more to the margins than it had been before has faded away. With the expansion of Holocaust denial, the arguments of deniers seem to be further permeating Western society.

This is partly indicative of a state of mind that comes with postmodern society. Anything that has happened can be denied, even if it occurred before our eyes. One only has to read the various books published in the West claiming the United States was behind the September 11 attack.51 Similar opinions also prevail in unfree societies including many Muslim states. At the same time, Holocaust denial is also an indication of how important the Holocaust has become in contemporary society’s historical consciousness.

With his Holocaust denial, Irving may have aimed to make neo-Nazism acceptable. Lipstadt remarked in this context that denial is a threat to documenting responsible history. “If one history can be denied, any history can be denied. History then becomes totally subjective. It becomes negotiable, i.e. whatever one states, it is.”52 Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman sum it up in a single sentence: “Holocaust denial is a harsh lesson in historical skepticism gone down the slippery slope into nihilism.”53

This is one more example of the sensor role that Jews frequently play in Western society. The Jews are often among the first to be attacked, but they are rarely the last. The importance of the Irving trial for society at large, not only Jews, was recognized by Lipstadt’s barrister Richard Rampton.

Lipstadt mentioned that Rampton, who is Scottish, said:

“We must fight the battle against deniers because otherwise none of us will be safe in our beds.” When he said that, he was not expressing a personal fear of persecution. He was expressing his understanding of the kind of liberal democratic society in which he wants to live. That society is threatened by the likes of David Irving. I was very appreciative that Rampton realized that Holocaust denial is not only a threat to Jews, but also to his own society.54

Setting up Data Banks

In 1945, when the American army liberated the concentration camps, General Dwight D. Eisenhower had the foresight to have the atrocities documented.55 Denial of the Holocaust, however, continues, despite the huge amount of documentation available.

In recent years data banks and major websites have been set up to fight denial. Emory University operates a sizable website, “Holocaust Denial on Trial: Using History to Confront Distortions.”56 After the Holocaust Conference in Teheran in 2006, the university announced that it would translate its website into Farsi as well as Arabic and Russian. It said it hoped to expand the site into the languages of other countries where Holocaust denial is widespread.57 In addition to the languages just mentioned, the site is now also available in Turkish.

In spring 2009, the Dutch Center for Information and Documentation Israel (CIDI) announced that, together with the umbrella organization of Dutch Jewry (CJO), a data bank on the Holocaust has been established to counter the increase in Holocaust denial. CIDI’s Elise Friedmann said this information is needed because negation of the Holocaust is very much alive.58

This battle has become necessary for the uninformed public. In its framework one also has to point out that Holocaust deniers act out of bad faith, knowing that they are wrong but trying to advance a political agenda that demands that the Holocaust be stricken from history.

Notes

1. Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 276–277.
2. Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New York: Plume 1993), 50–52.

3. Ibid., 51–65.
4. Ibid., 11.
5. Ibid.
6. Henry Rousso, Le dossier Lyon III: Le rapport sur le racisme et le négationnisme à l’université Jean Moulin (Paris: Fayard, 2004). [French]
7. Pierre Prier, “A La Mecque, le président iranien nie la Shoah,” Le Figaro, 9 December [French]
8. “Iran: Holocaust Remarks Misunderstood,” com, 16 December 2005.
9. Anne Barnard, “Conference in Iran on Holocaust Begins,” Boston Globe, 12 December
10. AP, “Iran  Opens  Conference  to  Discuss  Evidence  of  Holocaust,”  USA  Today,  12 December 2006.
11. Nasser Karimi, “Holocaust Cartoon Wins a Prize in Iran,” New York Sun, 3 November 2006.
12. Goetz Nordbruch, “The Socio-Historical Background of Holocaust Denial in Arab Countries: Reactions to Roger Garaudy’s The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics,” ACTA, 17 (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2001), 27.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., 1.
15. AP, “Muslim Brotherhood Says Holocaust Is a Myth, Lashes Out at U.S.,” Haaretz, 23 December 2005.
16. Ibid.
17. Johathan Jaffit, “Fighting Sheikh Zayed’s Funding of Islamic Studies at Harvard Divinity School,” in Manfred Gerstenfeld, ed., Academics against Israel and the Jews (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 2007).
18. www.forbes.com/forbes/2000/0703/6515256a.html, viewed May 2007.
19. Alan M. Dershowitz, “The Real Jimmy Carter,” Frontpage Magazine, 30 April 2007.
20. www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/399, viewed May 2007.
21. Fadi Eyadat, “Poll: 40% of Israeli Arabs Believe Holocaust Never Happened,” Haaretz, 17 May 2009.
22. See the essay by Mikael Tossavainen in this volume.
23. Ibid.
24. Rafael Medoff, “Likely PA Prime Minister a Holocaust-Denier,” com, 26 February 2003, viewed 24 April 2009.
25. 25. Danny Ben-Moshe, “Holocaust Denial in Australia,” ACTA, 25 (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2005), 1.
26. 26. www.ihr.org/main/journal.shtml.
27. AP, “Fischer’s Beliefs May Limit His Options,” New York Times, 3 August 2004.
28. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Denial of the Holocaust and Immoral Equivalence,” an interview with Deborah Lipstadt, Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, 11, 1 August 2003.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. See the essay by Dave Rich in this volume.
33. Amelia Gentleman, “Nazi Occupation Not Inhumane — Le Pen,” The Guardian, 13 January 2005.
34. Henry Samuel, “Jean-Marie Le Pen Guilty over Nazi Comments,”Daily Telegraph, 9 February 2008.
35. AP, “Le Pen to Be Tried for Denying Brutality of Nazi Occupation of France,” Haaretz, 13 July 2006.
36. Renato Mannheimer, “E antisemita quasi un italiano su cinque,” Corriere della Sera, 10 November 2003. [Italian]
37. Ruth E. Gruber, “Poll Shows Italian Teens Harbor Racist and Anti-Semitic Attitudes,” JTA, 2 July 2003.
38. Michael Whine, “Expanding Holocaust Denial and Legislation against It,” Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 20, Nos. 1–2 (Spring 2008).
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. Chantal Abitbol, “Facebook Refuses to Ban All Holocaust-Denial Groups,” Australian Jewish News, 15 May 2009.
42. Andre Oboler, “Facebook, Holocaust Denial, and Anti-Semitism 2.0,” Post-Holocaust and anti-Semitism, 86, 15 September 2009.
43. ADL Backgrounder on Larry Darby, 7 June 2006.
44. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkizDpl7x_E (part 1), viewed 2 June 2009; www.youtube. com/watch?v=369WqEJ6ChA (part 2), viewed 2 June 2009.
45. Birger Henriksen and Olav Haugen, “Her Kommet David Irving til TV2,” www. tv2nyhetene.no/innenriks/article2746431.ece [Norwegian], viewed 7 June 2009.
46. Bernt Hagtvedt, “Hysteriet rundt Irving,” Dagsavisen, 3 June 2008. [Norwegian], English translation: www.israelwhat.com/?p=2092.
47. “Holocaust-Denying British Bishop Richard Williamson Ordered to Leave Argentina,”
    Daily Telegraph, 19 February 2009.
48. Ibid.
49. Devorah Lauter, “Sarkozy Blasts Holocaust-Denying Bishop,” JTA, 6 February 2009.
50. Tony Patterson, “Angela Merkel Attacks Pope over Holocaust Bishop,” The Independent, 4 February 2009.
51. Richard Landes, “The Jews as Contested Ground in Postmodern Conspiracy Theory,” Jewish Political Studies Review,  Vol. 19, Nos. 3–4 (Fall 2007).
52.  Gerstenfeld, interview with Lipstadt.
53. Shermer and Grobman, Denying History, 20.
54. Gerstenfeld, interview with Lipstadt.
55. Shermer and Grobman, Denying History, 19–20.
56. www.holocaustdenialontrial.org.
57. “Emory to Translate Holocaust-Denial Web Site into Farsi, Arabic, and Russian,”Chronicle of Higher Education, 20 December 2006.
58. “CIDI in actie tegen ontkennen Holocaust,” Reformatorisch Dagblad, 5 May 2009. [Dutch]