Autore:
Michael Whine
CDEC, Milan
13 November 2024
Distortion and trivialisation of the Shoah
Michael Whine
Holocaust denial is any attempt to negate the established facts of the Nazi genocide of European Jews (1). Put differently, it is”discourse and propaganda that deny the historical reality and the extent of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices during World War II, known as the Holocaust or Shoah” (2).
Holocaust distortion is rhetoric, written work, or other media that excuse, minimise, or misrepresent the known historical record. Not all distortion is done intentionally. Some may make uneducated remarks leading to further distortion. However, the half truths that Holocaust distortion creates can lead to Antisemitism (3).
Distortion is more subtle than denial. Jan Grabowski, the eminent Polish historian now at the University of Ottawa, has written that “Unlike Holocaust deniers, people and institutions engaging in Holocaust distortion do not deny the factuality of the Jewish catastrophe…..
They just deny that their nation, or their ethnic group had anything to do with it.” (4)
Some distorters and trivialisers claim that the Holocaust was invented or exaggerated by Jews as part of a plot to advance Jewish interests.
These views perpetuate long-standing antisemitic stereotypes. Their hateful beliefs helped lay the groundwork for Holocaust denial, distortion, and misuse. They all undermine the truth, and our understanding of history and reinforce prejudice against, or so hatred of Jews.
At another level, failure to differentiate the Holocaust and other genocides leads to comparisons which distort the historical facts and fail to convey the enormity of the Holocaust.
In a recent publication (5) IHRA noted that Holocaust distortion has become a more pernicious threat than outright denial, and that combating it has become a shared international challenge because it crosses cultural and national borders enabled by the Internet.
And so IHRA first discussed a definition during the Swedish government organised International Forum on the Holocaust in 2000.
Who are the distorters?
Initially it was the Nazis. Attempts to hide or distort evidence of the Holocaust began with the Holocaust itself. The Nazis used doublespeak and euphemisms, such as Sonderbehandlung (special treatment) or Endlösung (Final Solution) to hide their murderous policies.
Nuremberg and the subsequent other War Crimes trials effectively put a stop to the Nazi attempts to cover their crimes.
However, throughout the post-War period denier networks grew, particularly in France, Austria and Germany. But several important European Court of Human Rights cases upheld the criminal convictions of the deniers and the trivialisers. These include Garaudy v. France (6), where the Court held that denying the existence of clearly established historical events did not constitute scientific or historical research, and that Garaudy’s purpose was rehabilitation of the Nazis. In two other cases, Honsik v. Austria, and Marais v. France (7), the Court again upheld respective national court decisions that denying the Holocaust amounted to support for genocide. In M’Bala M’Bala v. France (8), the Court held that the defendant was not entitled to plead abuse of freedom of speech, or abuse of rights, when he was convicted of promoting trivialisation of the Holocaust in his theatrical presentations.
In Pastors v. Germany (9), the Court held that the defendant, a member of his regional parliament, could not claim freedom of speech when he had intentionally stated lies to defame Jews.
Then, the deniers and distorters came from the Far Right. Now, they come primarily from the Far Left, Islamists, the careless and the ignorant following the defeat of David Irving and his civil case against Penguin Books (10), when any so-called scientific proof of the facts of the Holocaust were destroyed and revealed as nothing more than the promotion of neo-Nazism.
Outright denial is therefore now rare, except on the Internet. The late Yehuda Bauer noted that outright denial has become a marginal issue in Europe, but that it still exists in America where there is less understanding and knowledge about the War.
Holocaust distortion may be pursued to advance anti-democratic political agendas, or to legitimise difficult national histories. This may be via national legislation that absolves the country of responsibility, expressions of public opinion supporting such legal measures, legal decisions that overturn criminal convictions of Nazi collaborators or rhetoric that employs historically inappropriate comparisons.
The growth of distortion, and trivialisation, prompted IHRA, to adopt their definition, which though not legally binding, like its definition of antisemitism, has been adopted by its member states.
It notes that:
“The goals of Holocaust denial often are the rehabilitation of an explicit antisemitism and the promotion of political ideologies and conditions suitable for the advent of the very type of event it denies.
Distortion of the Holocaust refers, inter alia, to:
1. Intentional efforts to excuse or minimise the impact of the Holocaust or its principal elements, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany;
2. Gross minimisation of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources;
3. Attempts to blame the Jews for causing their own genocide;
4. Statements that cast the Holocaust as a positive historical event. Those statements are not Holocaust denial but are closely connected to it as a radical form of antisemitism. They may suggest that the Holocaust did not go far enough in accomplishing its goal of “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question”;
5. Attempts to blur the responsibility for the establishment of concentration and death camps devised and operated by Nazi Germany by putting blame on other nations or ethnic groups.” (11)
Nazi-occupied countries, particularly in the Balkans and former Soviet Bloc states, admit their involvement in the Holocaust. The ‘Memorial for Victims’ in Budapest is officially titled the ‘Memorial for Victims of the German Occupation’. It depicts Hungary as the Archangel Gabriel being attacked by an eagle meant to symbolise Nazi Germany. But it fails to recognise that almost all the Hungarian citizens who were murdered were Jews. It suggests that Hungarians were innocent victims and fails to recognise that many Hungarians were complicit in rounding up Jews to be transported to the death camps, or that the Hungarian Arrow Cross murdered thousands of Jews on the banks of the Danube (12).
The Maly Trostenets memorial in Belarus reveals another distortion. It fails to mention that many of the 200,000 deaths it memorialised were of Jews (13).
Denial of the Holocaust in the Muslim and Arab world
Denial and distortion were common in the Muslim and Arab world, until the Peace process began, however disrupted that has been. Muslim states no longer promote denial, prompted in part by the statement by the Saudi-based Muslim World League denouncing denial, and its members’ visit to the Washington DC-based Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2017, and then the Muslim religious leaders’ 2020 pilgrimage to Auschwitz (14).
But Iran continued to promote denial and distortion. It did so to undermine the existence of the State of Israel, promote antisemitism and to advance its influence in the Muslim world. It did this by several means of course, but it was a constant feature of Iranian policy since the late Ruholla Khomeini.
However, Iran does not promote denial currently. This activity peaked under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Under his presidency and patronage the country hosted international cartoon competitions and exhibitions. The 2022 UN Resolution condemning denial, which was supported by all member states except Iran, was really influential in combating this policy and Iranian presidents have since then condemned the Holocaust (15) For example President Rouhani called it a “reprehensible and condemnable crime” although he questioned the numbers and methodology, thereby shifting the official Iranian stance from denial to distortion (16).
Holocaust distortion in recent years
The growth of European nationalisms in the twenty-first century has been the impetus for governments in Eastern Europe, the Baltic States and the Balkans to rewrite their histories under Nazi occupation. They have done so by promoting the idea that collaboration with the occupiers was primarily undertaken to defeat communism. Control of their historical narratives has become a major objective of their governments, and they have sought to cleanse themselves, and their collaborationist War-time leaders, of guilt.
Thus they equate the Holocaust with the Soviet occupation. And they do so with enormous resources. The Polish Institute of National Remembrance, created by the Polish parliament, had a budget of a hundred and twenty five million dollars when it started (17).
Other recent examples include the reference to Auschwitz as a ‘prisoner of war’ camp in Irish school textbooks (18).
So, denial, distortion and trivialisation feed into, and support, each other. Distortion and trivialisation occur ever more frequently especially on social media.
Comparisons between the Holocaust and Gaza appear daily, promoted not just by the traditional deniers but also by those we should consider moral and responsible leaders. In truth they are merely ignorant, sometimes playing to the masses for political support.
So we need states to educate and legislate against distortion, as well as denial, but to do so without infringing our concepts of free speech.
The recent Declaration of the Council of the European Union stresses that the harmful effects for collective historic memory and for the resilience, cohesion and security of European democratic societies should not be underestimated and needs to be confronted. It adds that antisemitic hate speech, including Holocaust denial, trivialisation and distortion should be adequately prosecuted (19).
We therefore need education for school age children and continuously thereafter, to demonstrate the terrible lessons we should learn from the Holocaust. But these lessons must be taught with the sensibilities of the audience in mind. In other words to place the history within its contemporary context without trivialising the facts.
Notes
- Holocaust Denial and Distortion, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
https://www.ushmm.org/antisemitism/holocaust-denial-and-distortion.
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The Working definition of Holocaust denial and distortion: full text, International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance,
holocaustrembrance.com/resources/working-definition-holocaust-denial-distortion
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What is Holocaust Distortion?, Protect the Facts, International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, https://www.againstholocaust distortion.org/what-is-holocaust-distortion/
-
Jan Grabowski, The New Wave of Holocaust Revisionism, pp.60 -65, Vol.39, Numbers 2-3, Summer/Fall 2022, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/868324
-
A Brief History of Holocaust Denial and Distortion, Protect the Facts, p.1, International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, 14 December 2022,
6. Garaudy v. France, European Court of Human Rights, Application No. 65831/01, 2 July 2003, https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng-press#%7B%22itemid%22:%5B%22003-788339-805233%22%5D%7D
7. Gerd Honsik v. Austria, European Court of Human Rights, Application No. 25062/94, 27
February 1997, https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/tkp197/view.asp?i=001-3494
Pierre Marais v. France, European Court of Human Rights, Application No. 31159/96, 24
June 1996, https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/tkp197/view.asp?i=001-88275
8. Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala v. France, Application No. 25239/13, 20 October 2025,
https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-160358
9. Pastors v. Germany, Application No. 55225/14, Final, 3 January 2020,
https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/fre?i=001-196148
10. Irving v. Penguin Books Limited, Deborah E. Lipstadt, High Court, Summary, 11 April
2000, https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5a8ff7de60d03e7f57eb2902
11. IHRA non-legally binding working definition of Holocaust denial and distortion,
International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, October 2013, https://holocaustremembrance.sharepoint.com/sites/Communication856/Shared%20Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx?id=%2Fsites%2FCommunication856%2FShared%20Documents%2FCommunication%20Assets%2FFinal%20Resources%2FIHRA%20non%2Dlegally%20binding%20working%20definition%20of%20Holocaust%20denial%20and%20distortion%2Epdf&parent=%2Fsites%2FCommunication856%2FShared%20Documents%2FCommunication%20Assets%2FFinal%20Resources&p=true&ga=1
12. Monuments and Holocaust Distortion, Ambassador Blog, Nicole Wu, Holocaust
Educational Trust,
13. Ibid, Nicole Wu
14. Dr. Mohammad bin Abdulkarim Al-issa, Muslim World League,
https://www.themwl.org/en/SG2019
15. Holocaust denial, United Nations General Assembly, 76/250, 20 January 2022,
https://documents.un.org/doc/undoc/gen/n22/235/79/pdf/n2223579.pdf
16. Iranian president Hassan Rouhani recognises ‘reprehensible’ Holocaust, Saed Kamali
Dehgan, The Guardian, 25 September 2013,
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/iran-rouhani-recognises-holocaust
17. Some Poles Collaborated With the Nazis, But Poland’s ‘Ministry of Memory’ Wants
People to Forget, Katia Patin, Time, 6 September 2022,
https://time.com/6208257/poland-ministry-of-memory-war-holocaust-history/
18. European Textbooks – Ireland Review, Inbal Goldberger, IMPACT se, November 2024,
https://impact-se.org/wp-content/uploads/European-Textbooks-Ireland-Review.pdf
19. Council Declaration on fostering Jewish life and combating antisemitism, Council Declaration, 14245/24, General Secretariat of the Council, Brussels, 15 October 2024,
https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-14245-2024-INIT/en/pdf