IBAAW

The news is full of stories about the UN meetings currently taking place. One of the top stories is of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom has been visiting New York, and has spoken at Columbia University recently. Ahmadinejad maintains many controversial views. He is trying to obtain nuclear energy for Iran, he insists that there is freedom of speech in Iran, and that the country is void of homosexuals.

He is also an avid holocaust denier and has been accused of antisemitism based on comments regarding Israel that may or may not have had meaning lost in translation. During a conference called "A World Without Zionism," he was quoted in a translation that Israel was a "disgraceful stain," that should be "wiped off the map." On December 12, 2006, at the "International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust," which has been referred to as a holocaust denial conference, he said that "Israel is about to crash," and that when it did, humanity would be free. At Columbia this past week, he referred to the holocaust as a "theory," rather than fact.

Holocaust denial has been going on since the holocaust took place during World War Two. The first deniers were the Nazis themselves, following the fall of the Third Reich. They used their knowledge of propaganda used during the regime to rewrite history and try to put a spin on their story. Quite a few historians call the holocaust a hoax, regardless of the hard evidence to prove otherwise. French historian Paul Rassinier who was actually imprisoned in Buchenwald, denied the gassings of the Jewish people. However, it is well-known that Buchenwald was not a mass extermination camp, which is obviously why he would not have witnessed any. It is also noted that Rassinier also omitted facts from his book, and ignored contradictions in his own writing.

Some claims holocaust deniers make include that the Nazis had no extermination policy, that gas chambers were not used, and that the figure of 6 million Jewish deaths is an exaggeration. However, there are quite a few facts to prove otherwise.

The Nazis were very bureaucratic and kept extremely well-detailed records. Why wouldn't they? After all, they thought they would get away with it, and I'm sure they thought having records of what they thought were accomplishments would be highly valuable. After the liberation of concentration camps, many records were found detailing the amount of people brought into camps, how many had been killed, and invoices for large orders of cyanide. Also, there were film reels made to document how things worked in the camps. Mass graves were found, survivors were interviewed and Nazi diaries were recovered. There is so much concrete evidence that it seems impossible for anyone to dispute it! After all, if six million Jews were not killed during the holocaust, what happened to them?

Investigation pertaining to people who deny the holocaust has revealed that many opinions that they pass off as "fact," are based on biased and falsified information.

So far, confronting this issue has proved to be difficult, since it has been said, that attempting to argue with a denier would perhaps influence the possibility of factual evidence being undermined. Still, I believe that these deniers and their movements are a valid threat that cannot just be ignored. Holocaust denial is getting bigger and bigger, especially with the media attention that Amadinejad is receiving on this current trip to the U.S.

During the International Conference to Review The Global Vision of the Holocaust, David Duke presented the idea that

"In Europe you can freely question, ridicule and deny Jesus Christ. The same is true for the prophet Muhammad, and nothing will happen to you. But offer a single question of the smallest part of the Holocaust and you face prison."

Well, the obvious difference with that, Mr. Duke, is that the Holocaust has hard proven fact to back it up. I'm not saying that Jesus and Muhammed do not have fact to prove their existence, on the contrary, I believe that they did walk this Earth, and that they were very influential people, but do I have solid fact to prove that they were connected to a source of higher power? No, I do not. Unfortunately, it seems that God has left less records of proof of his existence than the Nazis did of proof of their regime.

I think the visit of the Iranian President, and his views of denial, and the media attention they are receiving may not be all bad. At least it is opening it for discussion. This needs to be discussed instead of pushed back into the shadows. We all know that the denial of the holocaust is a lie, and we must stand up for it, to overshadow the denial views until they can no longer be heard at all. We must present the evidence so that there is no possible way to dispute it. We must use our morning Internet time to do research on topics like this one, to better understand our world and change it for the better.

Random Fact of the Day: Holocaust denial is complete and utter crap. It happened. It's fact. You can try, but you can't deny it. At least you can't and make any sane person believe you.

Labels: Exposé