Confusing Anti-Semitism With Anti-Zionism
Holocaust Case Study

 

The following piece is a script that accompanied my AV project for my university Holocaust Unit. Although the focus of the assignment was to decipher how one can prove the happenings of the Holocaust; what struck me during my research was how terms and titles can be manipulated just as much as history can. Especially in regards to the misuse of words such as “anti-Semitism” and “anti-Zionism”. It is extremely important, especially in this current age, when conflict, oppression and hatred are still heavily present, that we do not misuse these terms. 

 

HOW DO WE PROVE THE HOLOCAUST HAPPENED?

 

Before one can discuss how historians prove the Holocaust to have happened, we must properly define terms such as “the Holocaust”, “Holocaust denial”, and “anti-Semitism”. It is not only history that can be distorted and manipulated but also the terms and titles we use to describe such events and people.
 

The Holocaust, with a capitalized “H”, which has been widely accepted by scholars and historians, is defined by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as a “systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.” According to Deborah Lipstadt, Holocaust denial is a form of anti-Semitism and can be divided into two categories, “hard core” denial, and “soft core”. She states that hard core deniers pose the argument “that there was no planned centralized program of annihilation of the Jews by the Nazis”. She defines soft core deniers as those who do not deny that the Holocaust happened, but question the figure of 6 million, and the existence of gas chambers. Over time Lipstadt slightly altered these definitions. In 2015, she expressed that soft core deniers “draw false comparisons; claiming there is a genocide of the Palestinians and accusing Israel of “Nazi-like” tactics. This is sometimes called Holocaust switching or inversion: the victims are rendered into the victimizers.”
 

However, some would disagree with Lipstadt’s beliefs. Anti-Semitism is defined as “prejudice against or hatred of Jews”. Those who are anti-Zionist, stand up for the rights of the Palestinians, or outline how the Holocaust has been used today by Israel, the US and other bodies, as a political justification for the criminal assaults made against Palestine and international law, are not automatically anti-Semitic or should be deemed as Holocaust deniers. For they are not directing criticism upon Jews as a whole or denying the events of the Holocaust, but are simply questioning the government, their actions, and their justifications.

To further illustrate this, there are several accounts of Jewish individuals, Holocaust survivors, or children of Holocaust survivors that challenge the Israeli government, and by Lipstadt’s standards would therefore be considered a Holocaust denier and an anti-Semite, when in reality they are not. We must be extremely careful not to distort or misuse these words, as many intellectual figures to this day, are. Especially when discussing an event such as the Holocaust.

Holocaust denial, without completely neglecting Lipstadt’s two forms, can be defined more concisely as “attempts to negate the established facts of the Nazi genocide of European Jewry.”
 

According to Richard J. Evans, Holocaust denial involves (at minimum) the following beliefs.
 

(a) The number of Jews killed by the Nazis was far less than 6 million; it amounted to only a few hundred thousand, and was thus similar to, or less than, the number of German civilians killed in Allied bombing raids.

(b) Gas chambers were not used to kill large numbers of Jews at any time.

(c) Neither Hitler nor the Nazi leadership in general had a program of exterminating Europe’s Jews; all they wished to do was to deport them to Eastern Europe.

(d) “The Holocaust” was a myth invented by Allied propaganda during the war and sustained since then by Jews who wished to use it to gain political and financial support for the state of Israel or for themselves. The supposed evidence for the Nazis’ wartime mass murder of millions of Jews by gassing and other means was fabricated after the war.
 

In addressing the claim made that the number of Jews killed by Nazis was less than 6 million, historians analyse prewar and postwar censuses, as well as population estimates, testimonies, Nazi documentation as well as diaries such as Joseph Goebbels’; which outlines the regime’s pre-estimation of killings, as well as their determination to “clean up” and liquidate the Jews, which addresses Evan’s third basic denial claim. 
 

The obvious sources of evidence that are used to prove the happenings of the Holocaust include:
 

Millions of documents captured by Allied armies (which were submitted at the Nuremberg trial), which included Nazi records, artworks, Einsatzgruppen Reports, and other.
 

Photographs and videos that the Germans, themselves, produced during the war, including the “Stroop Report”.
 

Eyewitness testimonies, from both the perpetrators and survivors.
 

Auschwitz/Birkenau blueprints of the crematoria and camps.
 

David Irving, who is seen as a respectable academic by fellow deniers, is a key figure in the manipulation of history and deeming evidence as false. When tracking his knowledge back to his sources, these sources have evidently been altered, half-true, twisted or taken out of context. As historians such as Dr. Robert Jan van Pelt summaries, “Holocaust deniers don’t have the evidence. Theories but no evidence.” 
 

One of the best examples of this is Irving’s claims against the usage of gas chambers, theories based upon the findings of Fred Leuchter; outlined in The Leuchter Report. A report that has been refuted for using false and flawed methods and producing incorrect conclusions. However, such conclusions are apparently enough for revisionists such as Irving to adopt without further question or investigation.
 

Robert van Pelt responded by providing the British High Court with sufficient and extensive research, in order to prove the workings of the Auschwitz gas chambers and refute denier’s claims, in detail, rather than promoting one theory, (later proven to be incorrect), as the basis of his beliefs.

 

Research and evidence such as:
 

Careful and complex chemical analysis which outlines why there is and is not cyanide in certain parts of the gas chamber walls.
 

Explaining how the ovens could have incinerated around 1 million people, taking into account that many were children and burnt at the same time.
 

Proving that there were holes at the top of the gas columns, connecting the chambers to the outside world.
 

Understanding and reading the Auschwitz blueprints correctly.
 

Collecting documentation such as letters, photos and eye witness accounts proving the existence and function of gas hatches.
 

As Pelt describes, “none of these things by themselves say anything, but they say something when put together.” Which is an important point when discussing how evidence is scrutinised and legitimised. It is the responsibility of the historian to identify the value of evidence, individually and as a collective and from there reconstruct history.