Crucial to understanding and combatting Holocaust denial is a clear distinction between denial and revisionism. One of the more insidious and dangerous aspects of contemporary Holocaust denial, a la Arthur Butz, Bradley Smith and Greg Raven, is the fact that they attempt to present their work as reputable scholarship under the guise of "historical revisionism." The term "revisionist" permeates their publications as descriptive of their motives, orientation and methodology. In fact, Holocaust denial is in no sense "revisionism," it is denial.

Historical revisionism is a perfectly legitimate, respectable and necessary approach to historical analysis. Each new generation has at its disposal new information, new facts and new methods not available to its predecessors. Contemporary historians, armed with new documentary, archaeological and anthropological data, are in a much better position to assess the slavery era in the American south than were historians writing during slavery or in the decades immediately following Emancipation. Similarly, we are in a much better position today to assess the Vietnam War than we were in the 60s or the 70s. Our understanding of the role of women in U.S. and world history is largely the product of historical revisionists who dared to challenge the historical invisibility of women. African-American historians are now doing the same thing with regard to important contributions of African-Americans. The canons of scholarship and academic integrity make it incumbent upon historians to involve themselves in the on-going re-evaluation of historical events and issues. Even if they have an ideological "axe to grind," revisionist historians render a valuable service by bringing the issues into public discussion and clarification. But, as far as I am aware, no historian denies that slavery was ever practiced in the United States, that the Vietnam War never happened, or that women and blacks made important contributions to U.S. culture and history. Historical revisionism attempts to enhance and extend our understanding of history through continual re-interpretation of existing historical data.

Holocaust deniers have coopted the terms "revisionism" as an attempt to make themselves appear respectable and legitimate. In fact, there is not a qualified historian in the bunch. Greg Raven, editor of the Journal of Historical Review, a self-proclaimed "revisionist" journal, has a Masters degree in history and David Irving does not even have a college degree. Arthur Butz, one of the leading Holocaust deniers, is a professor of Engineering and Computer Science at Northwestern University. Fred Leuchter, the self-styled chemist who is central to the Zyclon-B controversy is not a chemist and, at the trial of Ernest Zundel in Canada, the judge refused to admit his testimony as an expert witness. At that same trial, Leuchter's testimony, and his credibility as a "revisionist," fell apart under cross-examination. See Lipstadt's analysis of the trial.

Perhaps a brief historical review of the emergence of Holocaust denial will set the stage for what comes later in this essay. The first important proponent of Holocaust denial was the French communist, Paul Rassinier (Crossing the Line, 1948). Essentially, Rassinier made two major arguments. (1) There is a natural human tendency to on the part of victims to exaggerate what has happened to them and (2) the "atrocities" that did occur were not the fault of the Nazis but of the victims themselves -- particularly the inmate guards whom the SS placed in charge of the camps

The themes introduced by Rassinier were rather quickly seized upon by antisemitic, pro-Nazi spokesmen in the United States such as the religious right-wing evangelist, W.D. Herrstrom, national socialists such as George Lincoln Rockwell and revisionist historians such as the widely read Harry Elmer Barnes at Smith College. Barnes was especially influential because of his reputation as a legitimate historian.

By the late 1960s the ideas of Rassinier, Barnes and an English professor at LaSalle College, Austin J. App, had caught the attention of the extreme political right in the United States and in Europe.

The Institute for Historical Review

One of the earliest, and most notorious, was Willis Carto. Long an avid neo-Nazi and racial purist, Carto founded the extreme right-wing Liberty Lobby and the fascist publication company, Noontide Press. Early in his career, he was associated with the right-wing political organization, The John Birch Society. After being kicked out of the Birch Society by its Director, Robert Welch, in 1959, he formed the Washington-based Liberty Lobby and its magazine,Spotlight. In 1969 Carto published an anonymous book entitled The Myth of the Six Million. The book was obviously written by revisionist historian David Leslie Hoggan. Similar activities began in England with the publication of a little 27-page booklet entitled Did Six Million Really Die? by Richard Verrall (pseudonym, Richard Harwood). This brief restatement of the Hoggan book was published by Spearhead, a neo-Nazi paper of the British National Front. Both of these publications were presented as "historical revisionism" when, in fact, they were Holocaust denial. Both downplayed Nazi atrocities and blamed the Holocaust "myth" on an international Zionist conspiracy.

In the United States, Holocaust denial attempted to move in the direction of scholarship with the 1974 publication of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century by Arthur R. Butz. Butz, an MIT trained PhD in engineering was, and still is, a member of the engineering faculty at Northwestern University. Familiar with the niceties of scientific presentation and having a legitimate claim to scholarship (in engineering), Butz lent an air of legitimacy and respectability to Holocaust denial. He argued that alleged gassings at Auschwitz and other death camps simply could not have occurred and, therefore, constitute a "hoax." In the face of testimony to the contrary from the accused war criminals at Nuremberg, Butz argued that they were coerced into such testimony by the clever and powerful lawyers for the victorious Allies and by their belief that, since the world already believed they were guilty, they would have a better chance by pleading guilty.

Butz' book stirred a significant controversy in the popular press, a fact which did not escape the sharp eye of Willis Carto. In 1978 he funded the creation of the California-based Institute for Historical Review (IHR). The IHR promptly created a publishing outlet of its own, The Journal of Historical Review, a very slick magazine produced in the format of a legitimate scholarly journal. One of the first official functions of the IHR was the organization of "international revisionist conferences" which purported to bring together revisionist "scholars" from around the world. In actuality, its purpose was to bring together deniers from all over the world.

At that first convention the Institute director, Lewis Brandon (whose real name is William David McCalden, an Irish-born neofascist and racialist, issued a challenge to anyone who could prove with hard evidence that any Jew was ever gassed by the Nazi regime. Even though the challenge was never serious and was merely a media ploy, Brandon offered a $50,000 reward to anyone who would step up and meet the challenge. It would be over a year before someone did accept the challenge. We will return to that case and it's outcome later in this essay.

The impact of these deniers in "revisionist" clothing is greatly abetted by certain characteristics of our times. As we approach the close of the 20th century, we find ourselves living in an age of skepticism -- about everything. There are clear signs that Americans have lost trust in government. This is not so much a result of scandalous, or alleged scandalous, behavior on the part of highly visible political leaders. It goes much deeper than that. In fact, it appears that American citizens have a remarkable capacity to overlook and forgive personal mistakes of political leaders. John Kennedy's alleged "womanizing" has done little to detract from the appeal of Camelot. Speaker Gingrich's recent admission of wrong-doing with regard to tax payments did not prevent him from being re-elected to the position of leader of the Senate. It seems that American may make these human foibles the grist of conversation and the butt of endless jokes; however, they do not figure prominently into our political choices. At a much deeper level, however, a prolonged and senseless war in Southeast Asia, the ramifications of Watergate, Koreagate and arms deals with Iran may have shattered faith in government beyond redemption.

A popular bumper sticker reads, "Ignore the media, think for yourself." It also appears that we have lost faith in the public media to tell us the truth about domestic and world events. News programs are presented to us in the format of a talk show where every question has at least two and usually many more sides. The end result is the conviction that there is no truth about anything.

At the university level, the canons of ethical neutrality obligate the professor to objectively present all sides of every issue and allow the student to make up his/her mind regarding courses of action and reaction.

Some years ago, a Canadian theologian, Pierre Berton, wrote a fascinating book entitled The Comfortable Pew. He called upon church leaders to reclaim a position of moral leadership and moral authority which, in the relativistic climate of modern times, they had abdicated. In Berton's view, the pews of our churches have become very comfortable indeed in the face of situational morality and relativistic ethics.

The combined effect of these trends may well be that the general population no longer believes that anything is right or, for that matter, wrong. Everything is relative, including truth. Every story has "another side. It seems to me that the postmodern deconstruction strategies of recent years has created an intellectual climate in which it is (a) easy to level questions against any historical construction and (b) easy to believe that history is a matter of perception, language, and political agenda. It seems to me that revisionism is part and parcel of this whole movement. The movement runs the gamut from Oliver Stone's powerful insinuation that, since there is some reason to doubt the conclusions of the Warren Commission, there is a major conspiracy to kill the president of the U.S. -- a conspiracy involving the Mafia, the Vice President, the CIA, the FBI, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Congress (sort of a long jump!) to the Afrocentrist interpretations of history advanced by Leonard Jeffries and Louis Farrakhan. Is the end product of deconstruction the conclusion that there is no ultimate historical reality -- any truth can be recast.

The crucial question is: are there canons of evidence which are, in fact incontrovertible? The power of revisionism and the intellectual climate is has fostered is nowhere more clearly seen as in the assault upon the Holocaust. If the most thoroughly documented event in human history is assailable through insinuation, is there any way to defend any historical "construction?"

Deborah Lipstadt reports that a 1993 Roper Poll found that 22 percent of American adults and 20 percent of American high school students believe that it is possible that the Holocaust didn't happen. A 1993 Newsweek poll found that fully 40 percent of American adults express doubts regarding the generally accepted magnitude of the Holocaust. Similar reports have come from Italy, Austria, France, Great Britain and Canada. While these results are disturbing, they must be put in perspective. First, the deniers are grossly in error when they take credit for these doubts. Deniers would have us believe that their "revisionist scholarship" has had the effect of cleaning up the historical account of World War II. In fact, their arguments have been overwhelmingly refuted point by point by scholars such as Lipstadt, Dawidowicz, Marrus, Browning and others. The increased skepticism regarding the Holocaust is highly correlated with the rise of neo-Nazi and neo-fascist ideologies throughout the western world.

It should also be remembered that the world is now fifty years removed from the immediate realities of the Holocaust as headline news. A new generation has almost completely replaced the one which experienced the war and its aftermath first-hand. This new generation has its own problems, issues and priorities including Vietnam, the restructuring of the world in a post-cold war era, Desert Storm, the Middle East crisis and a host of domestic economic and political woes. These realities added to an atmosphere of general skepticism and mistrust of authority structures have had a far greater impact on modern sensibilities that all the combined efforts and insinuations of the Holocaust deniers posing as historical revisionists. With these observations in mind, we turn our attention to their implications for the future.

In the fifty years that have passed since the end of World War II and the liberation of Holocaust survivors from the Nazi camps, the most powerful and effective answer to the deniers has been the personal, eye-witness testimony of the survivors themselves. The evidence presented by people who can stand up and say, "I WAS THERE!" None of the deniers were present to witness the facts they deny. Survivors had the power of first-hand experience to counter the claims of the deniers. "LOOK AT THIS BLUE TATTOO!"

The celebrated case of Mel Mermelstein versus the IHR is an excellent example of this issue. In 1979, the Institute for Historical Review , at its annual convention, offered a $50,000 reward to anyone who could step forward and prove that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and that any Jews were gassed there. In 1980, a Jewish survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Auschwitz prisoner A-4685, answered the challenge by presenting affidavits detailing the deaths of his mother, father, brother and two sisters at the camp. The IHR refused to pay the reward so Mr. Mermelstein sued the Institute. The case never actually went to trial. Both sides agreed to a summary judgment by the court, and the court decided for Mel Mermelstein.

The Honorable Thomas T. Johnson, on October 9, 1981, took judicial notice as follows:

"Under Evidence Code Section 452(h), this court does take judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944" and "It just simply is a fact that falls within the definition of Evidence Code Section 452(h). It is not reasonably subject to dispute. And it is capable of immediate and accurate determination by resort to sources of reasonably indisputable accuracy. It is simply a fact."

The text of the hearing before the Superior Court of the State of California is presented below:

SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA FOR THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES

MEL MERMELSTEIN. No. C 356 542
Plaintiff,

JUDGMENT
INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW, et al.
Defendants.
Pursuant to the Stipulation for Entry of Judgment executed on July 22, 1985, the Court renders the following judgment:

1. Defendants LIBERTY LOBBY, WILLIS CARTO, ELISABETH CARTO, LEGION FOR SURVIVAL OF FREEDOM, INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW, and NOONTIDE PRESS, and each of them, are jointly and severally liable to plaintiff MEL MERMELSTEIN for the sum of One Hundred Fifty Thousand Dollars ($150,000.00), reduced to the sum of Ninety Thousand Dollars ($90,000.00) payable as follows:

(a) Fifty Thousand Dollars ($50,000.00) on August 1, 1985,and delivered to the law offices of ALLRED, MAROKO, GOLDBERG & RIBAKOFF;
(b) Twenty Thousand Dollars ($20,000.00) on September 1, 1985;
(c) Twenty Thousand Dollars ($20,000.00) on October 1, 1985.

2. Should any of the installments not be made by the defendants against whom judgment herein is entered within the time period provided, plaintiff, at his sole option and discretion, shall have the following options:

(a) To rescind the Stipulation for Entry of Judgment and proceed to trial and any payments received by plaintiff to that date from defendants shall not be returned to said defendants; or
(b) Plaintiff may request entry of Judgment against each of said defendants, jointly or severally, in the sum of One Hundred Fifty Thousand Dollars ($150,000.00).

3. Defendants LIBERTY LOBBY, WILLIS CARTO, ELISABETH CARTO, LEGION FOR SURVIVAL OF FREEDOM, INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW, and NOONTIDE PRESS, shall issue and execute, by a duly authorized representative, a Letter of Apology to Mel Mermelstein, as follows:

"Each of the answering defendants do hereby officially and formally apologize to Mr. Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, and all other survivors of Auschwitz for the pain, anguish and suffering he and all other Auschwitz survivors have sustained relating to the $50,000 reward offer for proof that "Jews were gassed in gas chambers at Auschwitz".

DATED: AUG 5, 1985

ROBERT A. WENKE, JUDGE
SUPERIOR COURT
APPROVED AS TO FORM AND CONTENT:

G. G. BAUMEN
Attorney for Defendants
INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL REVIEW,
LEGION FOR SURVIVAL OF FREEDOM,
ELISABETH CARTO and NOONTIDE PRESS

VON ESCH & ASSOCIATES
Attorneys for Defendants
LIBERTY LOBBY and WILLIS CARTO

The Court then issued the following order to the defendants as an official:

STATEMENT OF RECORD AND
LETTER OF APOLOGY TO MEL MERMELSTEIN

"WHEREAS, the Legion for Survival of Freedom, and the Institute for Historical Review, sent by letter dated November 20, 1980, directly to Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, an exclusive reward offer in a letter marked "'personal'" dated November 20, 1980, offering Mr. Mermelstein a $50,000 exclusive reward for "'proof that Jews were gassed in gas chambers at Auschwitz'" "and further stating that if Mr. Mermelstein did not respond to the reward offer "'very soon"', "the Institute for Historical Review would ' publicize that fact to the mass media' ..."
"WHEREAS, Mr. Mermelstein formally applied for said $50,000 reward on December 18, 1980; and
"WHEREAS, Mr. Mermelstein now contends that the Institute for Historical Review knew, or should have known, from Mr. Mermelstein's letter to the editor of the Jerusalem Post dated August 17, 1980, that Mr. Mermelstein contended he was a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald; knew, or should have known, that Mr. Mermelstein contended that his mother and two sisters were gassed to death at Auschwitz; and knew, or should have known, of his contention that at dawn on May 22, 1944, he observed his mother and two sisters, among other women and children, being lured and driven into the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which he later discovered to be Gas Chamber No. 5; and
"WHEREAS, on October 9, 1981, the parties in dispute in the litigation filed cross-motions for summary judgment resulting in the court, per the Honorable Thomas T. Johnson, taking judicial notice as follows: "'Under Evidence Code Section 452(h), this court does take judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944'" and "'It just simply is a fact that falls within the definition of Evidence Code Section 452(h). It is not reasonably subject to dispute. And it is capable of immediate and accurate determination by resort to sources of reasonably indisputable accuracy. It is simply a fact.'"
"WHEREAS, Mr. Mermelstein and other survivors of Auschwitz contend that they suffered severe emotional distress resulting from said reward offer and subsequent conduct of the Institute of Historical Review; and
"WHEREAS, the Institute for Historical Review and Legion for Survival of Freedom now contend that in offering such reward there was no intent to offend, embarrass or cause emotional strain to anyone, including Mr. Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald Concentration Camps of World War II, and a person who lost his father, mother and two sisters who also were inmates of Auschwitz;
"WHEREAS, the Institute for Historical Review and Legion for Survival of Freedom should have been aware that the reward offer would cause Mr. Mermelstein and other survivors of Auschwitz to suffer severe emotional distress which the Institute for Historical Review and Legion for Survival of Freedom, now recognize is regrettable and abusive to survivors of Auschwitz.

The following letter was sent to Mr. Mermelstein:

"Each of the answering defendants do hereby officially and formally apologize to Mr. Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, and all other survivors of Auschwitz for the pain, anguish and suffering he and all other Auschwitz survivors have sustained relating to the $50,000 reward offer for proof that "Jews were gassed in gas chambers at Auschwitz".

DATED: 7/24/85
G. G. Baumen
Attorney for Defendants
Legion For Survival of Freedom,
Institute for Historical Review,
Noontide Press, and Elisabeth Carto

DATED: 7/24/85
MARK F. VON ESCH
Attorneys for Defendants
Liberty Lobby and Willis Carto

Needless to say, the IHR and the Liberty Lobby have not issued any more challenges of this kind. However, they have claimed, and probably correctly, that the press coverage and publicity they received was worth the price they had to pay. One suspects that this was the motive behind the challenge from the beginning. But additional court cases of this kind would certainly lead to similar outcomes and a growing body of adverse judgements against them would not be in their best interest.

Nor do they need to employ these tactics. They know full well that the time is rapidly approaching when there will be no more Mel Mermelsteins, or Magda Herzbergers or Elie Wiesels to offer their unique eye-witness testimony. Another couple of decades and there will be no more living survivors of the Holocaust. My great fear is that the deniers will exploit that reality with great effectiveness. This underscores the importance of written testimony in the form of memoirs. Every survivor who can possibly do so should be encouraged to write their memories as clearly and as accurately as possible. We will have among us for yet another generation the children of survivors, such as Joey Korn, who will have a legitimate case for entering court armed with their parents' eye-witness reports.

Conclusions

Contemporary Holocaust deniers are not revisionists -- not even neo-revisionists. They are Deniers. Their motivations stem from their neo-nazi political goals and their rampant antisemitism. Unfortunately, their arguments are being given credence in a world torn by relativism. Why should we care what they say? Some would argue that the only thing that is at stake in this controversy is the offense caused for those who survived the Holocaust and for the children of those who did not survive. If this were the only issue, we would say to those personally offended, "We are sorry your feelings are hurt. We regret that this assault against your precious memories has been perpetrated by these insensitive people." But, alas, far more is at stake. As the oft-quoted statement by philosopher, George Santyana, must ever remind us that "Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it." Keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust is the only safeguard, for Jews and non-Jews alike, against such ultimate inhumanity.