March 6, 2006

By David Matas
Winnipeg Free Press, March 5, 2006

Should Holocaust denial be a crime? David Irving was sentenced recently in Austria to three years in prison for denying the Holocaust. A Free Press editorial has argued that Irving should not have been convicted because “he did not accompany the denial by promoting or inciting hatred.” (Austria in denial, Feb. 22). Yet, Holocaust denial always involves the promotion and incitement of hatred.

The Holocaust is one of the best documented events of all history. There are many survivors still alive today who can testify to what happened.

There are many perpetrators who have been accused, tried, convicted, and punished. Their trials have left extensive records from the testimony of witnesses and filings of exhibits. There are museums and libraries throughout the world filled with documents and artifacts of the Holocaust. The remains of extermination camps still exist, such as Birkenau near Auschwitz and Majdanek. There are films, memoires, TV programs all grounded in the Holocaust. There are monuments commemorating what happened where the victims were killed and where the survivors now live, including a monument on the grounds of the Manitoba legislature.

One has to ask what Holocaust denial means, given this historical record. When a person says that the Holocaust did not exist, given all these court cases, all the monuments and museums, all the memoires and films, that person is alleging a fraud on a massive scale. Obviously, if the Holocaust did not happen, the survivors, the museum curators, the historians, the librarians, the prosecutors, the judges and juries, the movie and TV producers, the reporters are not just confused or forgetful. They are lying. Holocaust denial, by its very nature, is an allegation of massive fraud. Some forms of Holocaust denial actually assert this fraud. Others do not. However, it is not necessary to say the word “fraud;” the allegation of fraud is there even where it is unspoken. The United Nations Human Rights Committee in 1996 in the case of Robert Faurisson wrote about Holocaust denial that: “It is implied, under the guise of impartial academic research, that the victims of Nazism were guilty of dishonest fabrication.”

One has to ask further who would be behind such a fraud, if one accepts the fraud in the first place. The answer of Holocaust deniers is the Jews. Although much Holocaust evidence comes from non-Jews and much of the documentation is Nazi German documentation, information from survivors and the organized Jewish community is essential to the memory of the Holocaust.

Again, some Holocaust denial material explicitly accuses the Jewish community of perpetrating the fraud of the Holocaust. However, even the Holocaust denial material that says nothing about Jewish fraud implies this accusation. It is impossible to extricate Holocaust denial from this allegation of Jewish fraud, even where it is not explicit.

If we continue to follow this line of inquiry, one has to ask how such a fraud could be committed. How could the media, the libraries, the museums, the courts be filled with information about the Holocaust, if the Holocaust never happened? The answer deniers give or imply is Jewish control of the media, the libraries, the museums, the courts. Holocaust denial is a mutant of the standard historical anti-semitic smear that Jews control the world for their own evil interests. Here too, some forms of Holocaust denial state this explicitly. Even the forms of Holocaust denial that do not have this anti-semitic conclusion out front have it hidden in the background.

Finally, we have to ask, continuing to assume the fraud, why the Jewish community would carry out such a hoax. The answer Holocaust deniers give, sometimes explicitly, but otherwise implicitly, is for sympathy, for support for Israel, for reparations. Again, here we see Holocaust denial as a modern dress for a traditional anti-semitic slur, the slur that Jews are greedy.

The Supreme Court of Canada, in 1992 when it found unconstitutional the false news prohibition in the Criminal Code under which Ernst Zundel had been prosecuted for Holocaust denial, observed that different considerations might well apply to a more finely tailored provision. Since Holocaust denial is nothing more than a form of incitement to hatred against Jews, making it a criminal offence makes eminent sense.

David Matas is a Winnipeg lawyer and senior counsel to B’nai Brith Canada. He is the author of Bloody Words: Hate and Free Speech.