Buchanan And Other Holocaust Deniers example essay topic

Holocaust Denial " One is astonished in the study of history at the recurrence of the idea that evil must be forgotten, distorted, skimmed over. The difficulty, of course, with this philosophy is that history loses its value as an incentive and example; it paints perfect men and noble nations, but it does not tell the truth". -W.E. B Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 1935 As early as age thirteen, we start learning about the Holocaust in classrooms and in textbooks. We learn that in the 1940's, the German Nazi party (led by Adolph Hitler) intentionally performed a mass genocide in order to try to breed a perfect population of human beings. Jews were the first peoples to be put into ghettos and eventually sent by train to concentration camps like Auschwitz and Buchenwald. At these places, each person was separated from their families and given a number. In essence, these people were no longer people at all; they were machines.

An estimation of six million deaths resulting from the Holocaust has been recorded and is mourned by descendants of these people every day. There are, however, some individuals who claim that this horrific event Costello, 2 never took place. It is very difficult to deny the deaths of millions of Jews and other " imperfect" peoples, and it takes a great deal of work and effort to logically put forth such an assertion. These Holocaust deniers argue that the Holocaust is just a fable to show people what can happen when a person or group of people tries to play God.

This outrageous claim could result from several factors, and can only begin to be understood after intense research and analysis of influences and motives of Holocaust deniers. In almost every case of a denial of the Holocaust, there is a personal political agenda backing it. Before it can be understood why the claims of these people are so outrageous, the two sides to the issue of the occurrence of the Holocaust must be explained. The majority of people believe that it did occur and use pictures, memoirs, letters, and other primary sources from the time to prove its existence. On the other hand, there is the smaller community of people who claim that there was no Holocaust.

These are radical groups and self-described "revisionists. Those denying the event say that concentration camps were built after World War II was over as propaganda, and that the death toll numbers were simply made up. In their opinion", [Jews] were merely repatriated to Poland and Russia and, after Costello, 3 the war, to America" (Tokuno 1) This Holocaust refuting community also claims that the primary sources proving the existence of the Holocaust are also fabricated pieces of history used to make people think certain events happened when they really did not. As Hajime Tokuno describes it, "Deniers have subjugated science, in this case historical science, to a political agenda, creating a pseudoscience called Holocaust Denial" (Tokuno 2). The problem with both of these claims, and history in general, is that unless someone is actually at an event experiencing something, he or she has no way of knowing exactly what went on at a given time and date.

If a person needs to rely on sources other than themselves to learn the past, a primary source needs to be the first place looked. Speaking with a Holocaust survivor, seeing a picture from Nazi Germany at this time, or reading the diaries like that of a girl hiding from the Gestapo allows for the closest possible link from today to the days of the past. These items are the ones that will tell the story closest to the truth, and are the ones that need to be trusted. Holocaust deniers will tend to believe what they hope to be true, or what is beneficial for their case, even if it does not historically match up. In order to fully comprehend exactly what is being disputed by Costello, 4 these Holocaust deniers, it is necessary to first have all the facts of what the general population accepts as truth. In basic terms, six million Jews were intentionally annihilated between 1933 and 1945 in European countries occupied by Nazi Germany.

First, Jews (and later handicapped and disabled peoples) were organized into ghetto communities. Living conditions were not good, but they were far better than what was to come. The Jews were then shipped to concentration camps where they were stripped of all humanity and put to work like slaves. In 1945, The United States got involved and sent troops over to Europe, where concentration camp victims were liberated. From memoirs, architectural ruins, and surviving witness accounts, it is also known that gas chambers were used to murders the majority of the Jews at the camps.

Andrew E. Mathis provides the following definition of Holocaust Denial: Holocaust deniers question all three major points of definition of the Nazi Holocaust. First, they contend that, while mass murders of Jews did occur, there was no official Nazi policy to murder Jews. Second, they contend that there were no homicidal gas chambers, where mainstream historians believe over 1 million Jews were murdered. And third, Holocaust deniers contend that the death toll of European Jews during World War II was well below 6 million (Mathis 1). Costello, 5 Grobman and Shermer explain holocaust as "Some [histories] are certain, some less certain, and some simply impossible. Debunking is a strong word, but it seems an appropriate reaction to such an extraordinary claim as denial of the Holocaust" (Grobman and Shermer 99).

By definition, debunking is "To expose or ridicule the falseness, sham, or exaggerated claims of" (web), and that is exactly what needs to be done to these thin ideologies of Holocaust denial. So much proof exists that the Holocaust not only took place, but also made a great impact on the war and essentially the world. People almost have no choice but to believe that this event took place. A person has to consciously try to think that the mass genocide never happened. If when going to bed it was cloudy and then in the morning there were puddles on the sidewalk, the rain would not be denied simply because it was not seen. The first Holocaust questioners in the United States came onto the scene in the early 1950's, shortly after World War II, and remained in the States.

Even to present day, there are still groups and organizations specifically dedicated to proving the Holocaust was just a big hoax. "Holocaust denial found a receptive welcome in the United States" (Lipstadt 65). In 1990, Patrick Buchanan began to tell Americans that gas chambers were not used to kill Jews in German camps. Lipstadt explains Costello, 6 that Buchanan "wrote a column that included this statement: 'Diesel engines do not emit enough carbon monoxide to kill anybody. ' He went on to speculate that Holocaust survivors were unreliable as essex because they were suffering from group fantasies of martyrdom and heroics" (Grobman and Shermer 39). Why would Pat Buchanan want people to believe these claims?

What were his motives? Did Buchanan indeed have a political agenda? If more in-depth research is performed, a couple different factors come to the surface. First, Buchanan was preparing to run for president while writing this column. To get a popular vote, a presidential candidate must first be popular, and coming out with news like this could help him to gain that status. If Buchanan came out with statements like the one made above, it would seem like he previous governments were lying to the American people and he had the truth.

In this case, Patrick Buchanan's first priority was gaining a presidential office. The Holocaust refuting method seemed logical to Buchanan since David Duke had won 40% of the popular vote using similar tactics in Louisiana when he ran for US Senate in the late 1980's. When examining Duke a bit closer, it becomes apparent that he was the Imperial Wizard for the Ku Klux Klan, founder of the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAACP), and a self-Costello, 7 proclaimed "disciple" of Mr. Adolf Hitler. In addition, six years after this column was published, journalist Charles Allen declared that Buchanan was getting his information from the Institute for Historical Review. This organization is the leading Holocaust denial organization in the world (Buchanan's affiliation with this organization was confirmed by Mark Weber, the Institute's director). After realizing Patrick Buchanan not only had a political agenda but also obtained information from a one-sided source, it becomes clear that Buchanan's views are not only tainted, but they are also biased.

Buchanan and other Holocaust deniers like him see themselves as heirs to the group of revisionists who opposed America's involvement in World War I. These people were historians who relied on hard evidence and intense research to uncover events that were not publicly known at the time, whereas Holocaust deniers "make no distinction between fact and fiction" (Lipstadt 31). "Deniers have tried to link the two traditions, arguing that each has sought to create an alternative history for major events of the twentieth century. However, one of these schools used traditional historiographic methodology to do so, whereas denial relies on pseudoscience" (Lipstadt 32). Another denier of the Holocaust is British historian David Irving. This man wrote an excess of thirty books and novels (including Hitler's Costello, 8 War) theorizing that there was no Holocaust. "Since the 1970's, publications dealing with Holocaust denial throughout the world can be divided into two kinds: the first, vulgar, unsophisticated antisemitic propaganda, and the second, books and articles written in an academic style, with a research methodology, primary sources, 'scientific findings' and a complete set of claims" (S tauber 1), and David Irving is one of the leading historians producing the latter.

"Mr. Irving has a track record of uncovering startling new facts about supposedly well-known episodes of history. Much of his effectiveness is due to his extensive reliance on original source materials, such as diaries, original documents and so forth, from both official and private sources" (Weber 4). Irving took refuting the Holocaust one step further, and self-proclaimed himself a Hitler supporter (The fact that he studied, lived, worked, and wrote in Germany for a number of years may explain a biased view on the Holocaust and the tendency to side with the Nazi Party). In Hitler's War, Irving claims "that Hitler did not order the extermination of Europe's Jews: the mass killings must have been carried out by Himmler and his cohorts behind Hitler's back" (Weber 4).

The controversial statements led to many authors writing about Irving and his radical statements. Events escalated to the level of a court case in 2000 where Costello, 9 David Irving sued Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books. Irving claimed that Lipstadt wrote in her book Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory, "that [Irving] had persistently and deliberately misinterpreted and twisted historical evidence to minimize Hitler's culpability for the Holocaust" (Dodd 1) and that "Lipstadt's description of [Irving] as a man prepared to bend historical evidence until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda. ' (Dodd 2) Irving ended up losing the case (owing 150,000 pounds to Penguin), and it is said that "Irving unsuccessfully appealed against the judgment by Mr. Justice Charles Gray which stripped the author of the last shreds of credibility". (Dodd 1) In later years, David Irving revealed that he had changed his mind about the Holocaust. When he realized that his previously radical platform was getting him nowhere politically, he re-structured his ideas into those of the mainstream Holocaust "revisionists".

American deniers blame the Jews for putting on the hoax they like to call "The Holocaust". For hundreds and hundreds of years, the Jews have been blamed for trying to manipulate and frame non-Jews. "According to anti-Semites, Jews killed Jesus, poisoned wells, spread the Black Death, murdered Christian children to make Passover matzoth's Costello, 10 with their blood, and were the prime movers behind the Communist movement in Eastern Europe" (Mathis 2). By putting the blame on the very group that was almost exterminated, it is made to seem that the Jews "had it coming", so to speak. The goal of Holocaust deniers everywhere is to place blame on the imperfect victims, not the Aryan race, Hitler's perfect population.

The Holocaust was a dark time not only in Jewish history, but also in the history of mankind. The conclusion that all people are not equal and those of lesser value need to be exterminated is one that should never have been made. The concrete evidence that we, as a society, have today seems to prove that the Jewish Genocide by the Nazi people did indeed happen. In addition, it is very difficult to reasonably doubt this event, and people who do so seem to always have a political plan attached to it. David Duke used his radical position to gain almost half the voter's in Louisiana's support, and Patrick Buchanan used it to try to help his political campaign. Since Duke is not a household name or a prominent political figure, and Buchanan (though he is an accomplished author) did not win his presidential election in the early 90's.

It is bad enough that the Holocaust happened, and even worse that people deny it happened, but the worst part remains that political figures still use the denial to further their respective careers.