Origins of Denial Question Can you tell me approximately when the absurd notion that the holocaust never took place began? And who or what organization started promoting this idea? Yale Edeiken answers: Hello. I am one of the volunteers that answers questions for The Holocaust History Project. The denial of the Holocaust started almost directly after the war. A history of of the denial movement can be found in Denying the Holocaust by Deborah Lipstadt. Dr. Lipstadt's book is still in print. The movement began with several organizations based on the right wing fringe of American politics. One of the founders of the movement and one of its most relentless advocates was Willis Carto the founder of the Institute for Historical Review. He was well-financed having access to a portion of the Edison family fortune. A federal court which heard evidence on Carto and the activities of the IHR declared that Carto was an anti-Semite and the IHR one of the organizations he created to advance his anti-Semitic program. I simply cannot understand how anyone could deny that this atrocity took place. The question frequently arises as to why the "revisionists" deny something so-well established as the Holocaust. In the face of incontrovertible evidence they announce that they cling to their delusion that they are the only ones who can discern the truth and that all others are deluded, brainwashed, or part of vast conspiracy. Part of the answer can be found in the recent book by Ralph Ezekiel of Harvard's School of Public Health who spent several years researching neo-nazi hate groups. In the introduction to his book, The Racist Mind Ezekiel notes: The Holocaust plays a paradoxical role in all this. On the one hand, Holocaust denial matters to the movement, and its presses claim insistently that it is debatable whether those systematic murders took place. The white racist movement knows that for most people the immediate association with the word 'Nazi' is the word 'Holocaust,' an association that hinders broad organizing. At the same time, I sense that the movement's fascination with the Holocaust is exactly that: fascination. The most important thing for members about Hitler's regime is that it was a force so strong and so ruthless that it did not hesitate to murder. I think contemporary white racists NEED to talk endlessly about the Holocaust, need to keep saying over and over again that it did not happen -- so that they can keep talking about t, can keep thinking about it, can keep reassuring themselves that it DID happen, that they are part of a movement so merciless that they are safe. If they really believed Nazism had not killed, it would bore them. On occasion I have asked a young militant to imagine, just for a moment, that people like me are telling the truth: that Hitler and his group DID kill six million Jews, individuals who were in no way guilty of a crime. Would that make any difference to him? Every one answered that it would make no difference at all. The Bolsheviks were Jews, they would say, and had killed twenty million Christians themselves, and bad things happen in wartime anyway, and so on. The point is that not one of the young men who has been able to imagine for a moment that I am right was at all bothered. I think that they are fairly sure that Hitler did murder, and they are fairly glad; it reassures them. --Yale F. Edeiken back to the list of questions
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