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| You are here: 2000 / Workshops, Panels and Seminars / Workshops on Education / Workshop 3 on Education, "Facing Denial in Society and Education" / Presentation by Professor Robert Jan van Pelt | |||||||||
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Report from Workshop 3 on Education: "Facing denial in society and education" Presentation by Mr. Per Ahlmark Presentation by Mr. Stéphane Bruchfeld Presentation by Professor Irwin Cotler Presentation by Dr. Shimon Samuels Presentation by Professor Robert Jan van Pelt Presentation by Professor Robert Jan van Pelt van Pelt, Robert-Jan Auschwitz and Holocaust Denial Auschwitz played a pivotal role in the National Socialist attempt to exterminate European ewry. Therefore Holocaust deniers have come to the conclusion that it serves them well to concentrate all their forces on Auschwitz, the pivot of what they call the "Holocaust Hoax." Paradoxically, Auschwitz has become the focus of Holocaust denial because we know a lot about it thanks to the convergence between eyewitness' accounts, Kommandant Hss's post-war writings, the physical remains, the extensive building archive of the Auschwitz Central Building Office (which survived the war) and various other archival sources. The evidence for the role of other extermination camps such as Treblinka, Belzec and Sobiborsufficient as it may be to come to a moral certainty as to the war-time history of those placesis much less abundant. There are very few eyewitnesses, no confession that can compare to that given by Hss, no significant remains, and few archival sources. Given this situation, Holocaust deniers seem to have concluded that it makes strategic sense to concentrate their energies on debunking the Hss account and showing that Auschwitz could not have accommodated an extermination program. If argue that if they can discredit the seemingly strong historical record concerning Auschwitz, they will have also discredited the much less firmly founded record conerning the other camps. There is also a more hidden agenda, which Holocaust deniers do not articulate. Current Jewish history is deeply rooted in Auschwitz as the general symbol of the destruction of the Jewish people during the Holocaust. The revisionist allegations serve to dispossess the Jews from their history, and in doing so, in seeking to destroy a people's history, seek to complete a phsyical genocide with a symbolic one. In that sense, Holocaust denial is deeply antisemitic. Holocaust deniers have fired a barrage of arguments to show that Auschwitz could not have been an extermination camp, that the gas chambers could not have worked, or that the crematoria ovens could not have incinerated the great number of bodies claimed. Every time they have adduced specific technical arguments, which for technological laymenwhich is the great majority of us, and includes virtually all students of the Holocaustare difficult if not impossible to refute. They have presented themselves as successors of Sherlock Holmes, looking for clues that give access to the hidden truth. Their confidence that they can do so has been based on their assumption that the "Hoax" that is the Holocaust centers on the premise that Auschwitz was an extermination camp, and the assumption that Auschwitz was an extermination camp centers on the premise that it was equipped with homicidal gas chambers, and that our knowledge of the gas chambers is based on only a very few and very unreliable sources: mainly hearsay and a few scraps of paper. Therefore, they have proposed the theory that the whole "legend" will dissolve when one can show one error, one mistake, one inconsistency, or one contradiction. In fact, the assumption that the discovery of one little crack will bring the whole building down is the fundamental fallacy of Holocaust Denial. Our knowledge of the Holocaust depends on tens of thousands of individual pieces of information, many of which have nothing to do with Auschwitz, and if we do consider Auschwitz, then we may safely state that our knowledge of the gas chambers depend on thousands of individual pieces of evidence of different kinds and classes. All those data converge to a conclusion. Even if one can point at erroneous information, inconsistencies and contradictionsnormal occurrences in everyday historical practicethis does not mean that these disprove the existence of the gas chambers, or the Holocaust. >> Back to top |
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Introduction Opening Session: Messages and speeches Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches Workshops, Panels and Seminars
Other Activities |
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