Mass Holocaust-Denial ‘Infecting’ Eastern Europe – Study

Britain too - What's driving it?

The "House of Fates" Holocaust museum in Budapest, Hungary © Reuters/Bernadett Szabo

A new study suggests that Holocaust denial is at its worst in Eastern Europe, where “revisionist” governments driven by feelings of “victimhood” try to erase their nation’s culpability in the massacre of Jews.

The study, published on January 25 – just days before Holocaust Remembrance Day (yesterday) – indicates rampant levels of historical revisionism regarding the mass-extermination of Jews under Nazi rule in eastern parts of the European Union. The Holocaust Remembrance Project was conducted by researchers from Yale and Grinnell Colleges and endorsed by the European Union of Progressive Judaism (EUPJ), an umbrella organization which links more than 170 progressive Jewish communities in 17 countries.

“Revisionism” here refers to people minimizing their own government’s complicity, downplaying the number of victims, or claiming that the events of the Holocaust never occurred at all. Based on their findings, the study assigned countries a green, yellow, or red rating, indicating “progress, caution or problems,” in their relation to Holocaust history. Poland, Hungary, Croatia, and Lithuania all received a “red” rating, indicating that these countries have a serious incapability of “living up to their tragic histories.”

Alfons López Tena #FBPE ✔

@alfonslopeztena

 The governments of Hungary, Poland, Croatia, Lithuania are rehabilitating World War II collaborators and war criminals while minimising their own guilt in the attempted extermination of Jews https://politi.co/2Weyl0N 

Poland is particularly taken to task in the study. The authors describe the country as run by a “right-wing nationalist government” engaged in “competitive victimization, emphasizing the experience of Polish victims over that of Jewish victims.” Aside from rising levels of anti-Semitism and continued reductions in Holocaust education, the country came under fire for a law it passed in January of last year which made it illegal to implicate the Polish state in Nazi crimes.

Gabriel Armas-Cardona

@GArmasCardona

 Nationalism so blinding that they protest #HolocaustMemorialDay at #Auschwitz because they prioritize denying the evidence of Polish involvement over #Holocaust recognition. #genocide #Poland https://www.reuters.com/article/us-holocaust-memorial-poland/far-right-protest-during-auschwitz-camp-liberation-commemoration-idUSKCN1PL0N9 …

On the other hand, Romania and the Czech Republic were both given a green rating, and were held up as exemplars. The Romanian government was praised for requiring mandatory Holocaust training for its military general staff and establishing an independent Holocaust-study commission.

While this part of the report focused on countries in Eastern Europe, the rest of the continent didn’t fare much better in recent related studies. One study published around the same time indicated that despite widely available evidence, 1 in 20 Britons don’t believe the Holocaust took place at all.

1 in 20, or about 5% is roughly the number of Muslims living in Britain. Curious coincidence, I guess.

Holocaust denial in Britain a combination of

‘anti-semitism and ignorance’ – Nazi hunter

© Reuters / Ronen Zvulun

A recent poll revealed that 1 in 20 Britons don’t believe the Holocaust took place. Historian and ‘Nazi hunter’ Efraim Zuroff claims that the results show a combination of “anti-Semitism and abysmal ignorance.”

Sunday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Holocaust Memorial Day in the UK, marking 74 years to the day since the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz extermination camp. Despite extensive documentary evidence, and testimony from survivors and perpetrators, Holocaust denial is on the rise in Britain.

One in 20 Britons believe the Holocaust never happened, according to a poll published on Sunday. Eight percent believe that the official death count of six million is exaggerated and one in five believe less than two million Jews were murdered. 45 percent simply don’t know how many died.

“It’s quite shocking and surprising,” Efraim Zuroff of the Israeli office of the Simon Wiesenthal Center told RT. The results, Zuroff said, combine “anti-semitism with abysmal ignorance.”

“Holocaust denial is simply a new form of anti-Semitism,” Zuroff added. Aside from the latest British survey, a recent study conducted by the EU’s Agency for Fundamental Rights, found that 89 percent of Europe’s Jews feel that anti-Semitism has increased since 2012. The study found that social media allowed anti-Jewish conspiracy theories to spread, and the recent influx of millions of Muslim migrants has revived an ancient religious conflict in the streets of modern Europe.

I wonder if there isn't more to it than that. I wonder if there is a spiritual aspect to this, that as Britain, and the rest of the western world turns more and more away from Christianity, that antisemitism increases as a consequence of getting farther from God and Truth. It seems to be the most left-leaning people are the most likely to be anti-Christian and also, the most likely to be antisemitic. IMHO.

Certainly, as the 2nd paragraph above makes clear, increasing Muslim refugees into Europe results in increased antisemitism. This will increase with time as Muslims propagate much more quickly than Europeans, and 2nd generation immigrants tend to be more devout than their parents. The more devout a Muslim, the more likely they are to be antisemitic.

Zuroff recommends continued efforts to teach schoolchildren about the Holocaust, but claimed that the relatively small number of trials and convictions for those involved could have contributed to the multiple genocides that have occurred since. These include the 1994 Rwandan genocide, which is also commemorated on Sunday.

“I think that people who contemplate joining genocidal movements...the first question they ask themselves is ‘will I be caught?’” he explained. “Will I be held accountable?”

Zuroff himself has helped bring dozens of these Nazi war criminals to trial, including notorious Croatian camp commandant Dinko Šakić, and Hungarian war criminal Dr. Sándor Képíró, said to have been responsible for the murder of around 2,000 civilians in Novi Sad, Serbia, in 1942.