Holocaust Denials - Review of "The Abuse of Holocaust Memory: Distortions and Responses"

Gerstenfeld, Manfred (2009). The Abuse of Holocaust Memory: Distortions and Responses. Foreword by Abraham Foxman. Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, and the Anti-Defamation League. 243pp.

Reviewed by Israel W. Charny

This work deserves a place of merit on the bookshelves of all people who care about preserving the memory and understanding of the Holocaust, as well as all people who oppose any and all celebrations of mass violence and killing of human beings other than in true proven self-defense. It is a fine and important book, and it is a genuinely readable and interesting work for all those who are concerned with maintaining the authentic history of the Holocaust, and for addressing the Holocaust’s meanings and significance reverently and with genuine respect for the Jewish victims.

This work is also fine and satisfying reading on a literary basis. Gerstenfeld writes directly and clearly without pretensions or subterfuges. You know where he stands and what he is trying to tell you, and you in turn have a clear basis for going on to decide whether you do or do not agree with him.

The author, Manfred Gerstenfeld, whose professional grounding is in business strategy, is chairman of the Board of Fellows of the excellent Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, an editor of the Jewish Political Studies Review, and an expert on contemporary anti-Semitism around the world.

In this book Gerstenfeld has done yeoman intellectual service in cataloguing and classifying different categories or types and strategies of Holocaust denial (see Charny, 2003 for a classification of denials of genocides in general). Denials of the Holocaust are an amazingly widespread phenomenon in every culture, including western cultures, and including Muslim cultures which have adopted Holocaust denial as an explicit tool of their anti-Israeli positions, and in recent years including Iran which sponsors denials of the Holocaust as a major government policy, much as the Turks continue governmental activities to deny the Armenian Genocide. In Iran’s case, there is the added horror that Iranian denials of the Holocaust are coupled with their arrogant and defiant race towards nuclear capability, and these along with manifest calls for the actual destruction of the State of Israel! If once it was an intellectual advance to identify the underlying implied destructive messages in denials of a known genocide (see my work on the psychology of denial - Charny, 1991, 1992), now with the Iranian denials of the Holocaust the metaphoric or subtext meanings take on manifest meanings as a warning of very terrible real dangers in the coupling of denials with calls for the obliteration of Israel by a country hell bent on nuclear capability.

Gerstenfeld convincingly links the agenda of Holocaust deniers to manifest antisemitic thinking, intentional efforts to stir up hatred of Jews and/or delegitimization of the State of Israel, up to and including building desensitization to the actual destruction of the people of Israel and to the destruction of the Zionist state.

What is amazing about denials of the Holocaust, and as I will suggest shortly denials of any of the proven genocides in history, is the endless twists and turns that the human mind takes to produce the garbage and madness of denials. Gerstenfeld writes correctly that Holocaust denials as such – e.g., denials of death camps and gas chambers-- have been around and have received attention for several decades, but “other distortions of the Holocaust, however, have become increasingly important. The number of their mutations is growing as well” (p.23).

This book classifies, explains and illustrates eight types of denial of the Holocaust as follow:

• Holocaust Justification and Promotion
  The Jews were the cause of anti-Semitism and their own destruction.
• Holocaust Denial
  Negation of main facts of the Holocaust
• Holocaust Deflection and Whitewashing
  Along with admission the Holocaust took place, denying the responsibility of specific groups or
  individuals and shifting the blame to others
• Holocaust De-Judaization
  Minimizing the Jewish identity of the victim, stressing non-Jewish aspects of the Holocaust
• Holocaust Equivalence
  Whitewashing or minimizing the role of the Germans by equating other events to the Holocaust
• Holocaust Inversion: The Portraying of Israel and Jews as Nazis
  The victim people is demonized such as accusing Israelis of being the Nazis of today
• Holocaust Trivialization
  Comparing the Holocaust to other phenomena such as ecological abuse, abortion, human rights abuses
• Obliterating Holocaust Memory
  Destruction of memorials and memorial events including turning Holocaust memorials into “more general remembrance events”

Each and all of the above are clearly deserving of our understanding and our ability to counter them when we encounter them. Thus, I recently had the dubious privilege of encountering one, Norman Finkelstein in a TV debate (CrossTalk on RTV - Russian TV English language program, now available on YouTube; the program can also be seen in Issue 3 of GPN. Finkelstein, a son of bona fide Holocaust survivors, does not dispute the events; he reduces and dismisses their significance by attacking relentlessly and insultingly memorials of the Holocaust as intended for purposes of profit and power, and the State of Israel as oppressive and destructive of Arab rights. Finkelstein quotes his hero Noam Chomsky regularly, and has been the darling of anti-Israel groups (including Nasrallah and the Hezbollah in Beirut whom he has visited respectfully). Interestingly, I had first agreed to appear on RTV in response to their invitation to participate in a program in honor of International Holocaust Day (or January 27 as mandated beginning in 2005 by the UN), and it was only when I asked who else was on the program did I learn it was Finkelstein. My own philosophy about debating deniers frontally is yes, sometimes, not only to counter the distorted facts the deniers present, but with a serious effort to embarrass and expose the denier as hatefully anti-humanist, let alone a bigot and a celebrant of violence.

I think Gerstenfeld is in favor of such confrontations though I do not find that he has discussed explicitly the controversy among Holocaust scholars, such as Deborah Lipstadt who has always been and as far as I know is still against debating deniers, but of course as we all know that when the climactic and perilous situation arose of one vicious anti-Semite, David Irving, suing her, she rose to be a great and successful warrior on behalf of the integrity of Holocaust history. Gerstenfeld writes touchingly and courageously that we must fight back:

In an increasingly uncertain world, the Holocaust is likely to continue to play an important role as the metaphor of absolute evil.…Fighting the main manipulations of the Holocaust requires first understanding the nature of the abuses. This has to be followed by exposing the perpetrators, who must be turned into the accused (p. 170).

The concluding chapter of the book is devoted to “What Can and Should Be Done?” Again the author is clear, succinct, and calls for real action on many different fronts, including museums, monuments and memorials, ceremonies/remembrance days, art, literature, theatre, commemorative projects, prosecution of war criminals, and legislation. He also calls for our attention to the growing abuses prevalent on Internet along with the new opportunities to present constructive information to a wider audience that the new medium offers.

I have one major disagreement with the good author. To his credit, when I conveyed this criticism to him directly, he responded in his characteristic pleasant manner of welcoming open clarification of the difference between us. My strong disagreement is with what I perceive as Gerstenfeld’s characterization of any treatment of the Holocaust as a major event of genocide among many other events of genocide (regrettably and certainly past and future) as a denial of the Holocaust’s overriding meaning in its own right.

Gerstenfeld is opposed first to efforts “to void or minimize to a large extent the Jewish character of the victims” (p. 79), and of course he is correct in respect of such things as monuments to victims that ignore the predominance of Jewish victims, and that we Jews were the main object of the driving power of the bestial Nazi murdering machine -- which also took in other victims with them. But he allows himself to seek a particularity and prominence and uniqueness of the Jewish victims that, to my mind, the other victims of the Holocaust do not receive respectful attention. It is as if mentioning them is an attack on the Jewish victims (see the excellent work by Michael Berenbaum, who was second in command in construction of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on other non-Jewish victims in the Holocaust [Berenbaum, 1992].)

Second, Gerstenfeld is against “broadening the term Holocaust to various extents to include people other than the Jews…” (p.79), and for all that he writes carefully and not abusively, he pretty much slides into opposing “attempt[s[ to promote an overall message for the human race.” (p.79). I am glad to refer the reader to an essay in the Encyclopedia of Genocide (Charny et al., 1999) on the use of the word Holocaust in which we conclude that along with respecting the particularity of usage that has developed in re our Jewish people in the Holocaust—which we continue to write with a capital H, the word genuinely and historically belongs to all peoples. l recall that already in my early years in Israel in the 1970’s I found fairly prominent references to the shoah of the Armenian people among straightforward Jewish historians, such as an essay in the Bar Ilan University Magazine about the “Armenian Shoah as a dress-rehearsal for the Holocaust” (Lapid, 1972).

I think a telling argument for the relationship between the Holocaust and other cases of genocide is that there are also a great many parallels between Holocaust denial and denials of other genocides, especially the Armenian Genocide but not only. Thus, distinguished Armenian-American scholar, Richard Hovanissian (1998) of UCLA has written and lectured extensively on the parallels between the denials. Many genocide scholars, including myself, have concluded that denial should be viewed as “the last stage of the generic genocidal process,” where the perpetrator seeks to cover his tracks, and where the perpetrator and those who wish to honor and continue the original perpetrator’s prejudices and threats, like neo-Nazis to Jews and the Turkish government to Armenians, utilize denials to drive home messages of humiliation, power, and celebration of the violence that was done to the victim people.

My larger judgment is that genuine and extensive awareness of the genocides of other peoples is in our interests as Jews, first as a moral and caring people, and then as a basis for recruiting support into future centuries of other victim peoples to create a strong coalition who will remember and learn from our Holocaust and all other cases of genocide—and maybe, maybe we can contribute to some degree of prevention of future genocides of whichever peoples, before hundreds of millions more are murdered. The number given by RJ Rummel, University of Hawaii, for those murdered in genocide and related mass killing in the 20th century is around 260 million, or somewhat more than our 6 million Jews, I say wrily; but God only knows with no intention to reduce the grief and rage and significance that I feel for our Holocaust, which always remains at the center of my experience as a human being.

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and Chairman of its Institute for Global Jewish Affairs.

Gerstenfeld has been an international business strategist for forty years. His background is in chemistry, economics, environmental studies and Jewish studies. Gerstenfeld has authored thirteen books and edited five. Books of his have been published in six languages. His latest book (together with Steven Bayme) deals with the present and future of American Jewry.

The reviewer, Israel W Charny, is Executive Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem, and Editor-in-Chief of GPN GENOCIDE PREVENTION NOW www.genocidepreventionnow.org.

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The Laws Banning Holocaust Denial

Jacqueline Lechtholz-Zey

I. INTRODUCTION
A survey of the sixteen countries that have enacted laws that either directly criminalize Holocaust denial or can be used to prosecute individuals who deny the Holocaust: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, and Switzerland.

II. DISCUSSION
A. Laws that explicitly ban Holocaust denial
Austria
The Verbotsgesetz 1945 (The Prohibition Act 1945) is an Austrian constitutional law that provided the legal framework for denazification and aimed to suppress any potential of revival of Nazism in Austria. Yet the law did not clearly state that Holocaust denial was a Nazi activity, although the Austrian courts interpreted the act in this way. Because it was becoming more and more difficult to apply the law to neo-Nazi endeavors, particularly when “revisionism” became part and parcel of the neo-Nazi message, the law was finally amended in February of 1992. Among the changes to the law was a section that explicitly bans the denial or gross minimization of Nazi genocide or other Nazi crimes against humanity, thus making it easier to address Nazi propaganda and historical “revisionism.” The text of this law is as follows:

National Socialism Prohibition Law (1945, Amendments of 1992)
§3g. He who operates in a manner characterized other than that in § § 3a – 3f will be punished (revitalizing of the NSDAP or identification with), with imprisonment from one to up to ten years, and in cases of particularly dangerous suspects or activity, be punished with up to twenty years imprisonment.

§3h. As an amendment to § 3 g., whoever denies, grossly plays down, approves or tries to excuse the National Socialist genocide or other National Socialist crimes against humanity in a print publication, in broadcast or other media.

Belgium
The Holocaust denial law in Belgium was passed on March 23, 1995. This law makes it a crime to deny, grossly minimize, attempt to justify, or approve of the genocide committed by the Nazis during WWII. The offense is punishable by imprisonment of up to one year and a fine of up to 124 EUR, and prosecution is carried out by the Belgian Centre for Equal Opportunities.

Negationism Law (1995, Amendments of 1999)
Art. 1 Whoever, in the circumstances given in article 444 of the Penal Code denies, grossly minimizes, attempts to justify, or approves the genocide committed by the German National Socialist Regime during the Second World War shall be punished by a prison sentence of eight days to one year, and by a fine of twenty six francs to five thousand francs. For the application of the previous paragraph, the term genocide is meant in the sense of article 2 of the International Treaty of 9 December 1948 on preventing and combating genocide. In the event of repetitions, the guilty party may in addition have his civic rights suspended in accordance with article 33 of the Penal Code.

Art.2 In the event of a conviction on account of a violation under this Act, it may be ordered that the judgment, in its entity or an excerpt of it, is published in one of more newspapers, and is displayed, to the charge of the guilty party.

Art.3. Chapter VII of the First Book of the Penal Code and Article 85 of the same Code are also applicable to this Act.

Art. 4. The Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism, as well as any association that at the time of the facts had a legal personality for at least five years, and which, on the grounds of its statutes, has the objective of defending moral interests and the honor of the resistance or the deported, may act in law in all legal disputes arising from the application of this Act.

Czech Republic
The Czech Republic has made denial of the Holocaust as well as negationism of communist atrocities illegal.

Law Against Support and Dissemination of Movements Oppressing Human Rights and Freedoms (2001)
§ 260 (1) The person who supports or spreads movements oppressing human rights and freedoms or declares national, race, religious or class hatred or hatred against other group of persons will be punished by prison from 1 to 5 years. (2) The person will be imprisoned from 3 to 8 years if: a) he/she commits the crime mentioned in paragraph (1) in print, film, radio, television or other similarly effective manner, b) he/she commits the crime as a member of an organized group c) he/she commits the crime in a state of national emergency or state of war

§ 261 The person who publicly declares sympathies with such a movement mentioned in § 260, will be punished by prison from 6 months to 3 years.

§ 261a The person who publicly denies, puts in doubt, approves or tries to justify Nazi or communist genocide or other crimes of Nazis or communists will be punished by prison of 6 months to 3 years.

France
The Gayssot Act was passed in France on July 13, 1990. The Act criminalizes questioning the existence of crimes of humanity as defined in the Charter of the International Military Tribunal, which was used at Nuremberg in 1945 to 1946 to convict Nazi leaders. Robert Faurisson, an infamous Holocaust denier, challenged the Act but the Human Rights Commission upheld it as a necessary means to counter possible antisemitism.

Law No. 90-615 to repress acts of racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia (1990)
Art 9. – As an amendment to Article 24 of the law of July 29, 1881 on the freedom of the press, article 24 (a) is as follows written: Art. 24 (a). - those who have disputed the existence of one or more crimes against humanity such as they are defined by Article 6 of the statute of the international tribunal military annexed in the agreement of London of August 8, 1945 and which were a carried out either by the members of an organization declared criminal pursuant to Article 9 of the aforementioned statute, or by a person found guilty such crimes by a French or international jurisdiction shall be punished by one month to one years imprisonment or a fine.

Art 13. - It is inserted, after article 48-1 of the law of July 29, 1881 on the freedom of the press, article 48-2 thus written: Art. 48-2. - publication or publicly expressed opinion encouraging those to whom it is addressed to pass a favorable moral judgment on one or more crimes against humanity and tending to justify these crimes (including collaboration) or vindicate their perpetrators shall be punished by one to five years imprisonment or a fine.

Germany
Volksverhetzung (“incitement of the people”) is a concept under German criminal law that prohibits the incitement of hatred against a particular group of people.

§130 Public Incitement (1985, Revised 1992, 2002, 2005)
(1) Whoever, in a manner that is capable of disturbing the public peace:

1.incites hatred against segments of the population or calls for violent or arbitrary measures against them; or
2. assaults the human dignity of others by insulting, maliciously maligning, or defaming segments of the population,
shall be punished with imprisonment from three months to five years.

(3) Whoever publicly or in a meeting approves of, denies or belittles an act committed under the rule of National Socialism of the type indicated in Section 6 subsection (1) of the Code of Crimes against International Law, in a manner capable of disturbing the public peace shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than five years or a fine.

(4) Whoever publicly or in a meeting disturbs the public peace in a manner that assaults the human dignity of the victims by approving of, denying or rendering harmless the violent and arbitrary National Socialist rule shall be punished with imprisonment for not more than three years or a fine.

Section 3 above refers to the following crimes:

§ 6 Genocide
(1) Whoever with the intent of destroying as such, in whole or in part, a national, racial, religious or ethnic group:
1. kills a member of the group,
2. causes serious bodily or mental harm to a member of the group, especially of the kind referred to in section 226 of the Criminal Code,
3. inflicts on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction in whole or in part,
4. imposes measures intended to prevent births within the group,
5. forcibly transfers a child of the group to another group,
shall be punished with imprisonment for life.

Hungary
In 1992, The Hungarian Constitutional Court struck down an existing law against Holocaust denial on the grounds that criminalizing it was incompatible with the right to free speech. However, on February 22, 2010, the Hungarian Parliament again passed legislation that criminalizes the minimization or denial of the Holocaust, and President Laszlo Solyom signed the bill into law on March 3, 2010. According to a spokesperson, the current President does not believe that this legislation contravenes the Hungarian constitutional right to free speech.

The reform was passed with a 197-1 vote, with 142 abstentions. The new law will come into effect in early April. The text reads:

Those who publicly hurt the dignity of a victim of the Holocaust by denying or questioning the Holocaust itself, or claim it insignificant, infringe the law and can be punished by prison sentence of up to three years.

Israel
The Knesset (the Supreme Court in Israel) passed a law to criminalize the denial of the Holocaust on July 8, 1986.

Denial of Holocaust (Prohibition) Law, 5746-1986
Definitions
1. In this Law, "crime against the Jewish people" and "crime against humanity" have the same respective meanings as in the "Nazis and Nazi Collaborators Law, 5710-1950.

Prohibition of Denial of Holocaust
2. A person who, in writing or by word of mouth, publishes any statement denying or diminishing the proportions of acts committed in the period of the Nazi regime, which are crimes against the Jewish people or crimes against humanity, with intent to defend the perpetrators of those acts or to express sympathy or identification with them, shall be liable to imprisonment for a term of five years.

Prohibition of publication of expression for sympathy for Nazi crimes
3. A person who, in writing or by word of mouth, publishes any statement expressing praise or sympathy for or identification with acts done in the period of the Nazi regime, which are crimes against the Jewish people or crimes against humanity, shall be liable to imprisonment for a term of five years.

Permitted publication
4. The publication of a correct and fair report of a publication prohibited by this Law shall not be regarded as an offence thereunder so long as it is not made with intent to express sympathy or identification with the perpetrators of crimes against the Jewish people or against humanity.

Filing of charge
5. An indictment for offences under this Law shall only be filed by or with the consent of the Attorney-General.

Luxembourg
Article 457-3 of the Criminal Code, Act of 19 July 1997 outlaws Holocaust denial in addition to the denial of other genocides. Punishment for violating this Act is imprisonment up to 6 months and/or a fine. The offense of “negationism and revisionism” applies to

...anyone who has contested, minimized, justified or denied the existence of war crimes or crimes against humanity as defined in the statutes of the International Military Tribunal of 8 August 1945 or the existence of a genocide as defined by the Act of 8 August 1985. A complaint must be lodged by the person against whom the offence was committed (victim or association) in order for proceedings to be brought, Article 450 of the Criminal Code, Act of 19 July 1997.

Poland
Poland criminalizes both Holocaust denial and the denial of crimes perpetrated by communists.

Act of 18 December 1998 on the Institute of National Remembrance - Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation

Article 55
He who publicly and contrary to facts contradicts the crimes mentioned in Article 1, clause 1 shall be subject to a fine or a penalty of deprivation of liberty of up to three years. The judgment shall be made publicly known.

Article 1
This Act shall govern:
1. the registration, collection, access, management and use of the documents of the organs of state security created and collected between 22 July 1944 and 31 December 1989, and the documents of the organs of security of the Third Reich and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics concerning:
a) crimes perpetrated against persons of Polish nationality and Polish citizens of other ethnicity, nationalities in the period between 1 September 1939 and 31 December 1989:

- Nazi crimes,
- communist crimes,
- other crimes constituting crimes against peace, crimes against humanity or war crimes

b) other politically motivated repressive measures committed by functionaries of Polish prosecution bodies or the judiciary or persons acting upon their orders, and disclosed in the content of the rulings given pursuant to the Act of 23 February 1991 on the Acknowledgement as Null and Void Decisions Delivered on Persons Repressed for Activities for the Benefit of the Independent Polish State (Journal of Laws of 1993 No. 34, item 149, of 1995 No. 36, item 159, No. 28, item 143, and of 1998 No. 97, item 604),
2. the rules of procedure as regards the prosecution of crimes specified in point 1 letter a),
3. the protection of the personal data of grieved parties, and
4. the conduct of activities as regards public education.

Romania
Romania proposed an Emergency Ordinance on March 13, 2002 to prohibit Holocaust denial. The law was ratified on May 6, 2006, and also bans racist, fascist, xenophobic symbols, uniforms and gestures. Violations are punishable by up to five years in prison.

Emergency Ordinance No. 31 of March 13, 2002
Article 3. – (1) Establishing a fascist, racist or xenophobic organization is punishable by imprisonment from 5 to 15 years and the loss of certain rights.

Article 4. – (1) The dissemination, sale or manufacture of symbols either fascist, racist or xenophobic, and possession of such symbols is punished with imprisonment from 6 months to 5 years and the loss of certain rights.

Article 5. – Promoting the culture of persons guilty of committing a crime against peace and humanity or promoting fascist, racist or xenophobic ideology, through propaganda, committed by any means, in public, is punishable by imprisonment from 6 months to 5 years and the loss of certain rights.

Article 6. – Denial of the Holocaust in public, or to the effects thereof is punishable by imprisonment from 6 months to 5 years and the loss of certain rights.

B. Laws that prohibit genocide denial generally
Several countries do not ban Holocaust denial specifically but instead have passed legislation criminalizing the denial of any genocide, which clearly can be enforced against Holocaust deniers as well.

Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein’s criminal code prohibits the denial of genocide:

§ 283 Race discrimination
5. Whoever publicly denies, coarsely trivializes, or tries to justify genocide or other crimes against humanity via word, writing, pictures, electronically transmitted signs, gestures, violent acts or by other means shall be punished with imprisonment for up to two years.

Portugal

Article 240: Religious, racial, or sexual discrimination
2 - Whoever in a public meeting, in writing intended for dissemination, or by any means of media:

a) incites violence against an individual or group of individuals because of race, color, ethnic or national origin or religion, or

b) defames or slanders an individual or group of individuals because of race, color, ethnic or national origin or religion, particularly through the denial of war crimes or against peace and humanity;

with intent to encourage or incite to racial or religious discrimination, shall be punished with imprisonment from 6 months to 5 years.

Switzerland
The denial of genocide and other crimes against humanity is an imprisonable offense under Swiss law.

SR 311.0 Swiss Penal Code, Article 261 Racial Discrimination

Whoever publicly, by word, writing, image, gesture, acts of violence or any other manner, demeans or discriminates against an individual or a group of individuals because of their race, their ethnicity or their religion in a way which undermines human dignity, or on those bases, denies, coarsely minimizes or seeks to justify a genocide or other crimes against humanity ... shall be punished with up to three years imprisonment or a fine.

C. Rejections of laws criminalizing Holocaust denial
Because of the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, Holocaust denial has not been criminalized in the United States. Freedom of expression is also a cornerstone of British society, therefore Holocaust denial has not been prohibited in the United Kingdom either. Italy approved a draft law that imposes jail terms for racially motivated crimes, but does not go so far as to prohibit Holocaust denial specifically, although this was Justice Minister Mastella’s initial aim. Italy has also rejected measures proposed by the European Union to impose EU-wide bans on Holocaust denial, on the basis of protecting freedom of speech. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, a Bosniak member of the Parliament proposed a draft law in 2007 to criminalize Holocaust denial and the denial of genocide and other crimes against humanity. However, Bosnian Serb MPs have been repeatedly opposed to such legislation. There is concern that such a law might be used as a weapon against their community. As one delegate explains, “[w]ar crimes are a sensitive issue in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I am not sure this law would actually lead to reconciliation and justice fulfillment.” He continues on to say that Bosnian Serbs “consider that [the law’s] adoption would cause disagreement and even animosity.”

Several countries formally banned Holocaust denial in the past but the denial has since been decriminalized. As discussed, the Hungarian Constitutional Court formerly struck down a law against Holocaust denial in 1992 on the grounds that doing so was incompatible with the right to free speech. Spain banned genocide denial in general until the Constitutional Court of Spain ruled that prohibiting denial was unconstitutional. Thus, as of November 7, 2007, Holocaust denial is legal, but justification of the Holocaust (or any other genocide, for that matter) is still an imprisonable offense.

Jacqueline Lechtholz-Zey graduated from the Early Entrance Program at California State University Los Angeles at age 19 in 2007. She earned her B.S. in Business Administration with an option in Business Arts-Prelegal. She also minored in Economics and Law and Society. In her year off before starting law school, she had the opportunity to travel to Israel. Her Birthright experience had a tremendous impact on her, and from then on she became even more dedicated to finding meaningful work and a way to preserve human life and dignity. Jackie began her legal studies at Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, in Fall of 2008, and in her second year she took Law and Genocide with Professors Michael Bazyler and Stan Goldman. In this course, she wrote her final paper on the propriety of Holocaust denial laws, a portion of which is published here. She is also Chief Articles Editor of the Entertainment Law Review at Loyola, and her article on extending copyright protection to fashion designs will be published in Vol. 30, Issue III.

Currently, Jackie is continuing her work in the field of Holocaust and genocide law by working for Professors Bazyler and Goldman as a research assistant. She is working on a book chapter about the kapo trials, as well as a piece on societal reactions to the Nuremberg trials. While very passionate about genocide prevention, Jackie is also a lover of art and has translated that interest into pursuing fashion law. Though vastly different fields of study, she hopes to find a way to reconcile these passions and ultimately make a meaningful contribution to society. She will graduate from Loyola Law School in May 2011.

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Apologists for U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt Head List of "Ten Most Absurd Holocaust Statements" for 2009

Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies Press Release

WASHINGTON - Authors claiming that President Franklin Roosevelt was helpless to rescue any Jews from the Holocaust topped the 2009 annual list of ten most absurd statements about the Allies' reaction to the Nazi genocide. According to the David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies. The annual list for 2009 was released in conjunction with International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which is commemorated on January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

"Despite mountains of evidence to the contrary, some FDR apologists still claim there was nothing he could have done to rescue Jews from the Holocaust," said Wyman Institute director Dr. Rafael Medoff. "Like the last Japanese soldier holding out on a remote island years after World War II ended, these diehards simply refuse to face the facts."

Medoff said the purpose of the annual list is to "expose the most severe misrepresentations of the Allies' response to the Holocaust, so that the public will have an accurate and balanced account of those crucial historical events."

The nominees were judged by a panel of scholars who have researched the Allies' response to the Holocaust: Prof. David S. Wyman, author of The Abandonment of the Jews; Prof. Laurel Leff, author of Buried by 'The Times'; Dr. Racelle Weiman, founding director (emer.) of Hebrew Union College's Center for Holocaust and Humanity education; Prof. Bat-Ami Zucker, author of In Search of Refuge; Prof. Judith Baumel-Schwartz, author of Unfulfilled Promise; Dr. Alex Grobman, author of Denying History; and Wyman Institute director Medoff, author of Blowing the Whistle on Genocide.

The Ten Most Absurd Statements in 2009 about the Allies' Response to the Holocaust

1. "The only meaningful way to save the intended victims of HItler's murder machine was to win the war as quickly as possible." -William J. Vanden Heuvel, longtime president of the Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt Institute, on NewYorkTimes.com, 5 October 2009.

COMMENT: There were, in fact, a variety of ways that Jews could have been saved before the war ended, such as using empty troop supply ships returning from Europe to bring refugees for temporary shelter to the United States; bombing the Nazi death camps or the railway lines leading to them; and pressing the British to open Palestine to Jewish refugees.

2. "[W]e have to keep in mind that the German army controlled everything after 1940. Nobody was escaping. The uh--the uh, nobody could get out....The Jews of Europe had been Hitler's prisoners since 1940. They couldn't get out. It didn't matter whether we let 'em in, they couldn't get out." -Robert N. Rosen, author of Saving the Jews, speaking on May 7, 2009 at the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI., http://main.gvsu.edu/hauenstein/?id=40130E84-99A9-ABD7-8BB977C001C18738.

COMMENT: In fact, Hitler Europe was far from hermetically sealed. For example, more than 26,000 European Jewish refugees escaped to Palestine between 1941 and 1944; about 8,000 Jews escaped from German-occupied Denmark to Sweden in 1943; thousands of Jews fled from German-occupied territory to Soviet territory during 1940-1945; several thousand refugees, mostly Jews, were smuggled out of Vichy Francy in 1940-1941 by Varian Fry's rescue network; and thousands of Jewish refugees escaped from elsewhere in Europe to Italy, 1,000 of whom were brought to the United States in 1944.

3. "[A]ll presidents are required to take an oath of office to enforce the laws of the United States, and the then-in-effect law, that of 1924, prohibited more than 100,000 people coming into this country a year, and that 100,000 were allocated by a complicated formula. So the fact that a president [such as Roosevelt] doesn't like a particular law doesn't somehow mean that there is automatically a change in the law." - Prof. Gerhard Weinberg, speaking on the radio program "MTSU on the Record" [Tennessee] on October 18, 2009. http://frank.mtsu.edu/~proffice/podcast/2009/OTR_10-18-09.mp3.

COMMENT: The maximum number that could have been admitted in any one year was 154,000, not 100,000. The fact that President Roosevelt could not unilaterally alter the immigration law does not change the fact that the Roosevelt administration could have saved many Germany Jews without changing the law, simply by permitting the existing quotas to be filled each year. A total of 184,525 immigrants could have been admitted to the U.S. from Germany (and, later, German-annexed Austria) from 1933 to 1939, but the actual number of German Jews admitted during those years was only about 70,000.

4. "We have found some fundamentally new information about the president's views and policies before and during the Holocaust..." (p.4) "[W]e have uncovered some key episodes in changing American refugee polices previously overlooked ... President Roosevelt promised McDonald and George Warren, under the right circumstances, to ask Congress to appropriate $150 million to help resettle refugees in various parts of the world." (p.335).- Richard Breitman, Barbara Stewart McDonald, and Severin Hochberg, eds. Refugees and Rescue: The Diary and Papers of James G. McDonald 1935-1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

COMMENT: The episodes Breitman et al claim to have "uncovered" were not "previously overlooked"; they were described in, among other works, David S. Wyman's Paper Walls (1968) and Henry Feingold's The Politics of Rescue (1970). McDonald did not succeed in "changing American refugee policies"; indeed, the Roosevelt administration's intransigence was the whole problem. Roosevelt's statement to McDonald and Warren may or may not have constituted a "promise," but in any event he did not fulfill it; he never asked Congress to appropriate funds to resettle refugees. Finally, the term "under the right circumstances" is an elastic loophole that in effect cancels out the rest of that "promise"; for when it came to FDR and the Jews, "the right circumstances" never arrived.

5. Concerning the Wagner-Rogers bill, which would have admitted 20,000 refugee children from Germany outside the quota system, and which FDR refused to endorse:
"[President Roosevelt] saw that bill as a gesture--not a solution. He was a man of grand vision who wanted to resettle a much larger number of refugees from Germany" (p.335). - Richard Breitman, Barbara Stewart McDonald, and Severin Hochberg, eds. Refugees and Rescue: The Diary and Papers of James G. McDonald 1935-1945. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

COMMENT: There are no known documents in which FDR states that he disliked Wagner-Rogers because it would have saved too few Jewish refugees.

6. "Bombing the railway lines to Auschwitz and other camps would only have achieved a temporary respite for the Jews, and distracted attention and resources from the larger purpose of overthrowing the regime that was killing them." -Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War (New York: Penguin Press, 2009), p. 560.

COMMENT: Even a temporary respite might have saved many lives by disrupting the mass murder process. The claim that bombing the railway lines would have "distracted resources" was made by the Roosevelt administration in 1944, and was baseless, as demonstrated by the fact that U.S. bombers were already in the area, flying over Auschwitz repeatedly in the summer and autumn of 1944 as they struck German oil factories in the vicinity, some of them less than five miles from the gas chambers.

7. "McCloy, he was Assistant Secretary of War, and he's a very convenient target, because he's kind of a WASP, mildly anti-Semitic guy, who belongs to some clubs in New York that Jews don't belong to, and so he's kind of a good guy to make into a villain." -Robert N. Rosen, author of Saving the Jews, speaking on May 7, 2009 at the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI. http://main.gvsu.edu/hauenstein/?id=40130E84-99A9-ABD7-8BB977C001C18738.

COMMENT: In fact, scholars have criticized McCloy not because of his ethnic background or club memberships, but because of his opposition to the use of even minimal U.S. military resources to aid refugees or interrupt the mass murder process; his instruction to an aide to "kill" a request to bomb the railways to Auschwitz; his knowingly false claims, in rejecting bombing requests, that bombing would require the diversion of planes from elsewhere in Europe; and his decision to pardon or commute the sentences of large numbers of Nazi war criminals when he was High Commission of Germany from 1949 to 1952.

8. "[American c]ollege and university presidents defended cultural exchanges [with Nazi Germany] as a good way to enhance mutual understanding between the people of Germany and the United States. ... In the 1930s, of course, leaders in higher education didn’t have the luxury of hindsight." -Glenn C. Altschuler, in the Boston Globe, July 26, 2009, in his review of The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower, by Stephen Norwood.

COMMENT: The violence, antisemitism, and totalitarianism of Nazi Germany was well known when such cultural exchanges took place during the early and mid-1930s --not only "in hindsight." Among the well known features of Nazi Germany during this period were the mass expulsion of Jews from most professions; the book burnings, suppression of political dissidents, and state takeover of the news media; the Nazification of all school and university curricula; the Berlin pogrom of 1935; and the Nuremberg Laws.

9. "The United States accepted about twice as many refugees as the rest of the world combined, 200,000 of 300,000.” -Robert N. Rosen, author of Saving the Jews, speaking on May 7, 2009 at the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies, Grand Valley State University, Allendale, MI. http://main.gvsu.edu/hauenstein/?id=40130E84-99A9-ABD7-8BB977C001C18738

COMMENT: In fact, while the United States did admit about 200,000 Jews between 1933 and 1945, the "rest of the world combined" admitted about 365,000. Thus the U.S. admitted about one-third, not two-thirds, of the world total. (The most widely-accepted figures for Jewish immigration to destinations other than the U.S. from 1933 to 1945 are: Palestine, 138,000; Latin America, 85,000; Great Britain, 70,000; Canada, 5,000; Australia, 15,000; Switzerland, 22,000; Shanghai, 18,000, and Sweden, 12,000.)

10. "[W]hen Allied long-range bombers were able to make flights from our airbase in Foggia, Italy, with long-range fighter support, they were unaware of what was going on down below in the 'death camps.' Could they then have bombed the marshalling yards at Birkenau? Yes, they could have, but by that time all activity had really ceased and the Germans by November 29, 1944 were dismantling the crematoria at Auschwitz, and making efforts to re-locate, or kill the balance of the Jews that remained." -Richard J. Garfunkel, radio talk show host, June 16, 2009, "The Bombing of Auschwitz and Jewish Reaction to the Holocaust: Fact, Feelings and Reactions." http://rjgpublicthoughts.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2009/6/16/4226131.html

COMMENT: The Allies had sufficient information about Auschwitz-Birkenau and control of the skies in the region to bomb it by the early summer of 1944. The mass deportation of hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz was still underway at that time; it is not true that "by that time all [mass murder] activity had really ceased."

Source: The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies (January 26, 2010). Press Release: Apologists for FDR Top List of 2009's Ten Most Absurd Holocaust Statements.
For more information: rafaelmedoff@aol.com/1-202-434-8994.

ABOUT THE WYMAN INSTITUTE: The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, located in Washington, D.C., is a research and education institute focusing on America’s response to the Holocaust. It is named in honor of the eminent historian and author of the 1984 best-seller The Abandonment of the Jews, the most important and influential book concerning the U.S. response to the Nazi genocide. The Institute’s Advisory Committee includes Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel, Members of Congress, and other luminaries. The Institute’s Academic Council includes more than fifty leading professors of the Holocaust, American history, and Jewish history. The Institute’s Arts & Letters Council, chaired by Cynthia Ozick, includes prominent artists, writers, musicians, and filmmakers. (A complete list is available upon request.)

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A Heated TV Debate between Norman Finkelstein and Israel Charny on the Holocaust : CrossTalk on Holocaust: Murder Revenues

Title display of program by RTV:
"CrossTalk on Holocaust: Murder Revenues" and 'Holocaust Industry' Refers to Those Who Seek Profits from the Genocide Against the Jews"

Please click the play button in the screen above for CrossTalk on Holocaust - Part 1
Please click here for CrossTalk on Holocaust - Part 2
Please click here for CrossTalk on Holocaust - Part 3

A "heated debate" between Norman Finkelstein, a well known debaser of Holocaust memory and meaningfulness and Israel Charny, Executive Director of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem took place on RTV (Russian TV), in English, on January 27 2010, the day marked in the world by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Charny, who was filmed in a studio in Jerusalem while Finkelstein was filmed in New York, and the moderator directing the show was filmed in Moscow, tells that he was invited in calls from Moscow to appear on a show commemorating the Holocaust and agreed, and only when he asked who else would be on the show was he told it would be Finkelstein. Charny then continued in his agreement to appear knowing that he would be faced with the abusiveness of Finkelstein’s harangues against “shoa business.” He describes how at the conclusion of the filming, he was approached by a staff person in the studio in Jerusalem, a Russian Jews who has settled in Israel, who expressed heartfelt thanks for what he had said; and that he later also received a call from a staff person in Moscow in which she said that she could not have imagined that a person “could be so filled with hate” -- and asked for permission to invite Charny to reappear on RTV in the future.

Charny also reports that at least one very honored colleague, who is also a good friend, said to him that he would never agree to a debate with a denier. This is a position that has been taken by several thoughtful writers on denials of genocides, including Deborah Lipstadt in respect of deniers of the Holocaust. Ironically, Lipstadt was forced by David Irving into a huge "debate" in the great victory she had won over him and thereby over all deniers of the Holocaust. Charny has always taken the position that there is a need for some selective public confrontations and debates of deniers who are otherwise known to be causing noteworthy damage to memory and reverence. In this respect, Charny tells his favorite story of a radio debate in the US years ago between Lily Kopecky, a bonafide survivor of Auschwitz (who headed a survivor organization in Israel and published regularly a column, “Voice of the Auschwitz Survivor” in the Internet on the Holocaust and Genocide that was published by the Institute in Jerusalem over a ten year period), and Arthur Butz, who was well known for his Holocaust-denying best-seller, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Butz denied the gas chambers and ovens; but Kopecky herself had been an actual member of the Sonderkommando, and when she spoke as a genuine eyewitness, Butz walked out of the radio studio.

Is Finkelstein a bonafide denier? Denial intrinsically means an assertion that there was no Holocaust and it is true that Finkelstein does not do that. But we have over the years also identified denials of genocides though minimization, trivialization, and deflection of the meanings of the genocide --these concepts have developed both about the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide, let alone the most virulent of all denial strategies, attacking the victims instead of the perpetrators (see the important works of Manfred Gerstenfeld on denials of the Holocaust and Richard Hovanissian on denials of the Armenian Genocide, for fine examples).

In Charny’s concept, Finkelstein very much stands convicted of being a denier!

Sources:
Russia Today - Russian TV (RTV) and GPN Staff Writeup (January 27, 2010).
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Holocaust Denial Laws and Other Legislation Criminalizing Promotion of Nazism

Michael J. Bazyler
Professor of Law
Professional affiliation at time of original work:
von Oppenheim Research Fellow International Institute for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem
and Whittier Law School, California, USA.
Currently at Chapman University Law School, California, USA.

This paper was originally presented at a lecture to Yad Vashem. The original version appears on the Yad Vashem website.

I. Introduction

As a result of the enormous suffering inflicted upon the world by the Nazi regime, and especially Europe, a number of European countries have enacted laws criminalizing both the denial of the Holocaust and the promotion of Nazi ideology.

The aim of these laws is to prevent the resurrection of Nazism in Europe by stamping out at the earliest opportunity – or to use the phrase “to nip it in the bud” – any public reemergence of Nazi views, whether through speech, symbols, or public association.

Individuals and groups today promoting Nazism, often called neo-Nazis, do not limit their ideology to just anti-Semitism. Part and parcel of their message also involves hatred of other minority groups, most often individuals of African, Arab and Asian descent, and immigrants from non-European nations.

As a result, a number of the European laws banning neo-Nazi messages also ban racist and hate speech. Some also criminalize the denial of other genocides, most prominently the genocide of the Armenians.

The anti-Nazi laws do not exist in every European country. Presently, the following European countries have some legislation criminalizing the Nazi message, including denial of the Holocaust: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Spain and Switzerland. Holocaust denial is also illegal in Israel.

Some of these countries, like Germany and Austria, take these laws very seriously and vigilantly prosecute both speech and behavior having any reference to Nazis and Nazism. Others, like Lithuania and Romania, despite laws on the books, enforce them sporadically.

A last set of countries put a higher value on free speech over suppression of neo-Nazism and freely allow promotion of the Nazi message. In these countries, freedom of the press and freedom of speech are vehemently upheld even to the detriment of other rights. These countries include the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Scandinavian nations.

In 2005, the European Union considered enacting common rules banning or restricting the use of Nazi symbols and promotion of Nazi ideology, including Holocaust denial. However, the EU’s Executive Commission eventually recommended against such EU-wide legislation, noting that it would be "unwise" to seek a ban across the 25-nation bloc, citing the differing views in the countries involved.

One example of the disparity in European laws dealing with promotion of Nazi ideology concerns the availability of Hitler’s notorious autobiography, Mein Kampf [My Struggle]. Officially, Mein Kampf cannot be purchased in Germany, Hungary, Israel, Latvia, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland, but the book is readily available in Russia, Romania, the United States and the U.K.

In the United States, the First Amendment protects the freedoms of speech, press and association; such guarantees prohibit suppression of the Nazi message. As a result, neo-Nazi parties are completely legal (just like during the Cold War years, the Communist Party of the United States was allowed to exist) and their anti-Semitic and racist messages are protected by the Constitution. The only limitation on such speech, according to the Supreme Court, are calls for immediate violence.

It should also be noted that a multilateral human rights treaty to which 160 countries are parties, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, obliges member nations to pass domestic legislation prohibiting advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred. As a result, countries that do not specifically criminalize denial of the Holocaust do prosecute individuals who promote hate speech. The line dividing these two types of conduct – Holocaust denial and hate speech – is murky and individuals engaging in Holocaust denial usually do so in the context of making Jew-hating statements. These individuals are then prosecuted for violating hate speech prohibitions.

II. Western European nations with laws banning denial of the Holocaust and promotion of anti-Semitic and racist speech

Let me discuss two representative Western European countries with Holocaust denial laws – Germany and France – and set out how these laws are applied in these two countries.

A. Germany

1. The Law

In the aftermath of World War II, the National Socialist Party (the Nazi party) of Germany was considered a criminal organization and therefore banned. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1946 likewise ruled that the Nazi Party was a criminal organization.

German law, however, does not just stop at banning the Nazi Party. As part of efforts to overcome its Nazi past, Germany has criminalized denial of the Holocaust and also banned the use of insignia related to Hitler's regime and, as mentioned above, written materials or images promoting the Nazi message.

Section 130 of the German Penal Code prohibits denial or playing down of the genocide committed under the National Socialist regime (§ 130.3), including through dissemination of publications (§ 130.4). This includes public denial or gross trivialization of international crimes, especially genocide/the Holocaust.

The law has been amended a number of times since its initial passage in 1985.

In 1985, Holocaust denial was outlawed as an ‘insult’ to personal honor (i.e. an ‘insult’ to every Jew in Germany) and a penalty was set under the 1985 law of up to one year in prison or a fine.

In 1994, Holocaust denial became a criminal offense under a general anti-incitement law. The law states that incitement, denial, approval of Nazism, trivialization or approval, in public or in an assembly, of actions of the National Socialist regime, is a criminal offense. The 1994 amendment increased the penalty to up to five years imprisonment.

It also extended the ban on Nazi symbols and anything that might resemble Nazi slogans.

A special clause in Article 130 provides for community service for offenders under eighteen years of age.

The sale of Hitler’s notorious autobiography, Mein Kampf [My Struggle], is also banned in Germany and in a number of other European countries occupied by Nazi Germany, as will be discussed later.

2. Recent applications

The German anti-Nazi law is strictly interpreted. For example, a German man went on trial in September 2006 for displaying Nazi symbols including swastikas even though he was campaigning against far-right extremism - the swastikas had lines drawn through them representing rejection.

State Prosecutor Bernhardt Häussler urged a Stuttgart state court to fine Jürgen Kamm, owner of a mail order company that sells anti-Nazi t-shirts and badges. 6,000 Euros [$7,610] for selling merchandise that carry the swastikas and other Nazi symbols through his mail-order business. "Swastikas shouldn't be displayed in such a striking way," Häussler said, adding that he hopes the outcome of this trial will bring about a complete ban of Nazi symbols in public spaces.

Defense attorney Michael Wolff argued that Kamm was using the symbols to fight against neo-Nazis and other far-right extremists. Kamm explained: "It should not be illegal to use the symbols against Nazis."

The prosecutor disagreed. He argued that German law strictly forbids the use of symbols associated with the Nazi regime, no matter in what context they are used. He contended that it is irrelevant what the intent of the wearer is, and also that it did not matter that the symbol had been altered. The symbol should simply not be used publicly.

Perhaps such a literal interpretation of the law seems to be going too far. Several politicians, including the head of the Green party Claudia Roth, in reaction reported themselves to prosecutors in Stuttgart for wearing anti-Nazi t-shirts and buttons that include the banned symbols. Roth called the trial “a gift to the far-right.” Moreover, Germany's federal court of justice ruled in 1973 that it was not illegal to produce a swastika providing it had clearly been altered for the purposes of protesting against Nazism.

Nevertheless, the judge found Kamm guilty and fined him 3,600 Euros [$4,500]. The case is presently on appeal.

A much more serious case of Holocaust denial prosecution involves the notorious denier Ernst Zundel. German-born Zundel, now in his 60’s, emigrated in 1958 to Canada, from where he began disseminating in print form a substantial amount of material denying the Holocaust. In 1974, Zundel published a booklet penned by a British Holocaust denier entitled Did Six Million Really Die? His audience became much larger with the rise of the Internet and through the reach of a website created by his now wife and webmaster, Ingrid Rimland, , which includes references to such books as Truth at Last–Exposed. Because of free speech guarantees in the United States allowing Zundel to freely disseminate his views, however vile, the Zundelsite uses a U. S. based Internet service provider.

An excerpt from an article penned by Zundel in 1977 titled "Our New Emblem: The Best of Two Worlds" (referring to a design that merged a swastika and the American flag) and published in the magazine White Power is representative of his message:

Wherever we look, we White people find ourselves besieged by peoples of other races who compete aggressively against us for jobs, food, housing, education and above all -- power! The Jews are particularly adept at seizing or insinuating themselves into strategic positions in our society where they wield power far beyond the extent of their numbers....Through us, the White majority of Europe and America, the Jewish minority have obtained their advantages, including their Israel, their Federal Reserve, their World Bank and their International Monetary Fund. In exchange for these advantages, the Jews give us -- their White hosts -- wars, depressions, inflation, unemployment, energy shortages, higher and higher taxes and air piracy. Like sheep, they expect us to go down the road with them -- all the way to the kosher slaughterhouse. We White people of America have done nothing so far which would frustrate the Jews' expectations or their ambitions of becoming the world's slave masters.

Canada twice tried to prosecute him for his activities under their laws criminalizing intentional dissemination of false news. Even though he was twice convicted, Zundel’s convictions were overturned by Canadian appellate courts. On appeal of his second conviction, the Supreme Court of Canada in 1992 declared the “spreading of false news” criminal statute as incompatible with Canada’s free speech guarantees and therefore unconstitutional.

In 2005, Canadian immigration officials succeeded, after Zundel exhausted his judicial appeals process, to deport Zundel back to Germany. In November 2005, he was brought to trial before a state court in Mannheim, Germany to face charges of incitement, libel and disparaging the dead. As of this presentation, the trial still continues.

3. Growing Problem of Neo-Nazism in Germany and Need for Such Criminal Legislation

Despite this strict interpretation of the German so-called “Auschwitz lie” law, promotion of Nazi ideology is growing in two important areas: (1) music and (2) on the Internet.

a. Skinhead music

Germany's neo-Nazis are increasingly using music to spread their message, particularly among the unemployed youth of the former communist East Germany, according to experts on extremism in Germany.

In 2004, neo-Nazis applied for permission to hold 137 concerts, mostly in the poor eastern provinces of the former East Germany. Figures released by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution show that from January to September 2005, the authorities had received 100 such requests and the "trend shows no sign of slowing down." The official added that the amount of racist audio and video material seized by German authorities had also increased.

Recently, the extreme right National Democratic Party (NPD) in Germany began using music as part of its strategy to spread racist, anti-Semitic and anti-capitalist messages to German youth by distributing thousands of free CDs in front of schools. A rap group called Dissau Crime released a song called "Zyklon D," named after the type of gas used by the Nazis in their gas chambers during the Holocaust.

The impact of these messages cannot be ignored. In 2004, the NDP claimed its first regional success when it obtained 9.2 percent of the votes in a regional election in the German state of Saxony. According to Patrick Moreau, a French researcher who studies extremist groups in Germany, "In the new states, where unemployment stands at up to 40 percent, the NPD offers the youth a haven where they feel they are among friends, where they can drink beer and listen to music….It is a slow politicization through music.”

German authorities have tried to clamp down on the spread of racist music. In 2005, the lead singer of the German extremist band "Landser"-- Michael Regener – was sentenced to three years in prison for belonging to a criminal organization. In a symbolic defiance of authorities, Regener gave a performance on the evening before he was going to enter prison.

b. The Internet

The main purveyor of neo-Nazi hate speech (including music), however, is still the Internet. For music, the neo-Nazi websites offer free downloading of their antisemtic and racist songs. These sites are set up outside Germany, such as in the United States and Denmark, where their existence is not prohibited (see further discussion below).

B. France

1. The Law

French law does not explicitly criminalize denial of the Holocaust. Rather, “Law No 90-615 of 13 July 1990 tending to repress any racist, anti-Semitic or xenophobic acts,” commonly known in France as the Gayssot Law (Loi Gayssot) after its author, makes it an offense to question the existence of “crimes against humanity” as they are defined in the Nuremberg Charter.

Article R645-1 of the French Penal Code prohibits the public display of Nazi uniforms, insignias and emblems.

In October 2006, the French National Assembly also adopted a bill making it a crime to contest that the massacres of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 constituted genocide. The bill, yet to become law in France as of the time of this presentation, was heavily debated both in France and abroad. In retaliation for the National Assembly’s vote, Turkey suspended military relations with France. In 2007, the bill will be considered by the French Senate and then, if passed by that chamber, by French President Jacques Chirac who must sign it into law.

2. Application

In October 2006, French judicial authorities opened a judicial investigation to determine whether French far-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen should be tried for comments denying the brutality of the Nazi occupation of France during World War II. As a result, a French investigating magistrate is presently considering whether to recommend prosecution of Le Pen for "justifying war crimes" and "complicity in contesting crimes against humanity." Le Pen has a history of making statements disparaging the Holocaust. His most infamous statement, for which he was not prosecuted, was to label the gas chambers a mere “detail of the history of World War II.”

The most notoroius Holocaust denier in France, however, is Robert Faurisson, a former professor of literature at the University of Lyon. Faurisson has been prosecuted on several occasions for his public statements and publications denying the Holocaust. In 1983, Faurisson was fined and given a three month suspended sentence for "racial defamation" after making remarks on a radio show supporting Holocaust denial. In 1990, Faurisson gave an interview to a far-right magazine where he described the gas chambers as a "myth" and was thereupon charged under the Gayssot Law. He was convicted and sentenced to a 250,000 franc ($50,000) fine of which 100,000 francs ($20,000) was suspended. Faurisson appealed his conviction all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, which upheld the Gayssot Law as not being incompatible with European guarantees of freedom of expression, and dismissed Faurisson’s appeal.

France was also the forum for another famous Holocaust denial-related case. In LICRA v.Yahoo! Inc., a French Jewish student group, Ligue contre le racisme et l'antisemitisme et Union des etudiants juifs de France, obtained a court order in 2000 ordering Yahoo! to modify its website so that users in France are denied access to that portion of the site listing auction sales of memorabilia from the Nazi period. The French court found that the availability of such items in France through the Internet, even though the sales were conducted in the United States, to be in violation of the French law cited above, Article R645-1, banning the public display of Nazi symbols.

Yahoo! did not appeal the French court decision but instead brought a separate action in the United States seeking to bar its application in the United States on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment. The lower court granted Yahoo!’s application, but a federal appellate court in 2006 reversed and dismissed the case on the ground that American law cannot regulate French criminal legislation when it is applied in France.

III. Eastern Europe

Western European nations are not the only ones to criminalize denial of the Holocaust. Eastern European nations after their liberation from Communism have also followed suit, but with a wrinkle. For example, in November 2006, the Estonian government approved a draft law making it a crime to display Nazi-era symbols in public. Because of its history of Soviet occupation, Estonia also added a prohibition against the public display of Soviet-era symbols, such as the hammer and sickle. Current legislation bans inciting hatred on the grounds of political views or ethnic or social status, but does not specifically mention symbols. The maximum penalty under the new law would be three years in prison. "It will be decided case-by-case if an act of displaying the symbols of the occupying regimes incites hatred and thus constitutes violation of the law or not," said Justice Minister Rein Lang. "Nobody is going to ban the Soviet and Nazi symbols from being used in a theatrical performance or in research."

Historians remain divided over whether Soviet-era crimes should be equated with Nazi ones, including the Holocaust. Eastern European governments are also split over restrictions on symbols because of concerns about freedom of speech. Estonia, however, was not the first one to take the step of banning both Nazi and Communist-era symbols. Other former communist nations enacting similar bans since the fall of the Iron Curtain include Latvia, Hungary, and Poland. Latvia, Estonia's neighbor, which suffered a similar fate, has a law banning the use of both Soviet and Nazi symbols at public meetings. Hungary also bars use of the Arrow Cross symbol of its WWII pro-Nazi regime, plus the swastika, as well as Soviet symbols. Poland, one of the most serious victims of Nazi barbarity, in article 55 of the Polish Criminal Code criminalizes denial of both Nazi-era and Communist-era crimes.

IV. European nations without laws banning denial of the Holocaust and promotion of anti-Semitic and racist

The Scandinavian countries to date have put a higher premium on free speech over criminalizing Holocaust denial or hate speech. For example, in Denmark a private radio station -- Radio Oasis -- broadcasts uncensored, right-wing extremist propaganda and does so with the support of state funds under a Danish law guaranteeing state funds for non-commercial radio and television stations. Under that law, Radio Oasis receives a yearly subsidy from the state totaling nearly 50 percent of the station’s yearly expenses. Among its offerings, Radio Oasis features songs by neo-Nazi bands and messages guarding what the station perceives to be “the pure, white race of Danes.”

A. Great Britain

Great Britain likewise does not criminalize Holocaust denial or the public display of Nazi symbols. When Prince Harry, for instance, appeared at a costume party wearing a Nazi uniform, he was roundly criticized for his insensitivity, but it was clear that no British laws were broken. In contrast, when years earlier a partygoer in Germany appeared wearing a Hitler mask, criminal charges were brought against him.

Despite the absence of Holocaust denial laws, Great Britain was the scene of one the most publicized legal events involving Holocaust denial. In 1996, self-described British historian David Irving brought a civil defamation suit against American professor Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books stemming from a book on Holocaust deniers written by Lipstadt and published in 1994 by Penguin. In the book, Lipstadt named Irving as a Holocaust denier. Irving’s suit claimed that the allegation damaged his reputation.

While Irving began his writing career as a mainstream historian of World War II, his views over the years became more bizarre and he began to ally himself with groups denying the Holocaust, before whom he has made numerous appearances. In 1985, Irving appeared as a defense witness in Ernst Zundel’s second trial in Canada. While Irving in the past promulgated the controversial thesis that Hitler had not known about or ordered the destruction of European Jewry, at the Zundel trial he went a step further by nothing that he now was convinced that no gas chambers had been present at Auschwitz. At rally of Holocaust deniers in Calgary, Canada in 1991, Irving announced: “I don’t see any reasons to be tasteful about Auschwitz. It’s baloney. It’s a legend. . . . I say quite tastelessly, in fact, that more women died in the back seat of Edward Kennedy’s car . . . than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz.”

By the time Irving filed his suit against Lipstadt he was already notorious on the Holocaust denial scene. What made him different from others calling the Holocaust a lie was that he was an author whose works were published by prominent publishing houses. Despite his bizarre pronouncements, he was still viewed by some as a respected military historian. This, according to Lipstadt, made Irving “one of the most dangerous spokespersons for Holocaust denial.” He was “familiar with historical evidence,” she wrote in her book, and “bends it until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda.” Lipstadt went on to describe Irving as a “Hitler partisan wearing blinkers” and an “ardent admirer of Hitler.”

After a two-month trial in London, the trial judge issued a 333-page opinion ruling decisively against Irving. The opinion concludes with the following finding:

My conclusion [is] that Irving displays all the characteristics of a Holocaust denier. He repeatedly makes assertions about the Holocaust which are offensive to Jews in their terms and unsupported by or contrary to the historical record…. Irving has for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence; that for the same reasons he has portrayed Hitler in an unwarrantedly favourable light, principally in relation to his attitude towards and responsibility for the treatment of the Jews; that he is an active Holocaust denier; that he is anti Semitic and racist and that he associates with right wing extremists who promote neo Nazism.

In February, 2006, Irving was jailed in Austria for three years for Holocaust denial. His arrest and trial were based on speeches he made in Austria during a 1989 visit and lecture series when he stated there were no gas chambers at Auschwitz and no extermination camps in the Third Reich. He also called Adolf Hitler a protector of Europe's Jews. During his trial, Irving claimed that he had again changed his views on gas chambers. He told the judge that he is now convinced, contrary to his earlier assertions in the London defamation trial, at the Zundel trial and in 1989, that gas chambers did in fact exist. However, he continued to doubt the figure of 6 million Jews killed. The Austrian judge nevertheless found him guilty of violating Austrian law. As of this presentation, he is still in prison and appealing his conviction.

V. North America

A. Canada

Section 281 of the Canadian federal criminal code prohibits the promotion of hatred against any "identifiable group," but the statute is notoriously difficult to prosecute. For this reason, for example, it was not used against Ernst Zundel during his trials in Canada. The previous discussion noted the difficulty of trying someone for Holocaust denial in Canada in light of the decision of the Canadian Supreme Court that laws attempting to criminalize such denial are incompatible with Canadian guarantees of free speech.

B. The United States

Broad interpretation by the U.S. Supreme Court of the First Amendment guarantees in its constitution has made denial of the Holocaust, promotion of Nazi ideology and dissemination of racist and anti-Semitic speech completely legal under American law.

As a result, most of the Internet websites with neo-Nazi content originate in the United States but are available to anyone in the world with access to the Internet.

One of the most infamous cases confirming this right was the march by the neo-Nazis in the 1970’s in the Chicago neighborhood of Skokie, home to many Holocaust survivors. The organizers specifically chose Skokie because of the large survivor population. Despite governmental attempts to stop the march as an affront to the dignity to the survivors and the trauma to be inflicted upon them of seeing Nazis march in their neighborhood, the federal courts allowed the march to proceed.

NGOs in the U.S., such as the ACLU, vigorously defend neo-Nazis whenever their activities are aimed to be curtailed, and the ACLU has been heavily criticized for its work on behalf of neo-Nazis. The ACLU’s response is that it will defend anyone’s right to free speech, whatever their political affiliation and regardless of the vile content of the speech, since the ACLU only represents one client: The First Amendment.

Since the First Amendment allows Holocaust deniers to disseminate their views with impunity, notorious deniers have found safe refuge in the United States. Ernst Zundel temporarily lived in the United States until he was deported back to Canada for visa violations. In April 2004, an international conference of Holocaust deniers and neo-Nazis convened in honor of Zundel was held in Sacramento.

Home-grown deniers also abound in the United States. Arthur Butz, an engineering professor at Northwestern University in Chicago, has for many years issued texts denying the Holocaust, including the book The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. The scholarly-sounding Institute of Historical Review, based in Southern California, likewise freely disseminates materials both in print and on the Internet denying the Holocaust. Its website reproduces the entire text of the booklet Did Six Million Really Die? by British Holocaust denier Richard Verrall, (written under the pseudonym Richard E. Harwood), and published by Ernst Zündel in 1974.

VI. Muslim World

While every part of the world seems to have some individual or group espousing Holocaust denial – Australia, for example, has Frederick Toben and his scholarly-sounding Adelaide Institute –a major region from where Holocaust denial is regularly emanated is the Muslim world.

This includes Holocaust denial not only coming from countries with majority Muslim populations like the Arab states, Iran, Indonesia and Malaysia, but also pronouncements from Muslim leaders in the West. In July 2006, Sheikh Taj Aldin Alhilali, the mufti of Australia and a member of Prime Minister John Howard's Muslim Community Reference Group, dismissed the Holocaust as a "Zionist lie" in a series of fiery sermons.

Muslim-majority countries, however, seem to have the most frequent and most consistent pattern of Holocaust denial pronouncements, using statements first made by Holocaust deniers in the West. The most frequent assertion questions the number of Jews killed during World War II, and books such as The Hoax of the Twentieth Century and Did Six Million Really Die? have been translated into Arabic and are widely sold.

In 2005, the rhetoric acquired a new spokesperson: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. In a speech made that December, Ahmadinejad labeled the Holocaust a “myth” and a "fairy tale." In a March 2006 speech he again denied the Holocaust, adding this time:

They have fabricated a legend under the name Massacre of the Jews, and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselves. If somebody in their country questions God, nobody says anything, but if somebody denies the myth of the massacre of Jews, the Zionist loudspeakers and the governments in the pay of Zionism will start to scream.

These statements, coming in the aftermath of his earlier statement in October 2005 calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map” caused a large outry in the West, with political leaders and parties loudly condemming Ahmadinejad’s remarks.

Ahmadinejad’s speeches were followed by a Holocaust cartoon contest held in Tehran seeking to mock the Holocaust. The contest, launched by an Iranian newspaper, was publicized as a response to the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that sparked rage among Muslims worldwide.

On December 11, 2006, Iran held a a conference questioning the Holocaust. As reported by the International Herald Tribune, set to attend the conference was an Israeli Arab Muslim lawyer from Nazareth, Khaled Kasab Mahameed, who aimed to directly confront the phenomena of Muslim Holocaust denial. According to Mahameed,

Instead of trying to understand the Holocaust and learn something from it, they choose to deny it. . . . I'm going to tell them that there is no argument about the facts, and that they must try to understand how the Holocaust has shaped the positions of the Jews, of Europe, of America. I will tell them they must internalize its meaning and not say it didn't happen.

Iran refused to grant Mahameed a visa to attend the conference to present his point of view. The speaker of rosters did include former American Klan leader David Duke, French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson and Australian denier Frederick Toben.

The Tehran conference was roundly condemned worldwide. The European Union's top justice official described the conference as "an unacceptable affront" to victims of the World War II genocide. British Prime Minister Tony Blair denounced it as "shocking beyond belief." French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy called the conference "quite simply not acceptable.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said her country repudiated it "with all our strength. . . ."We absolutely reject this. Germany will never accept this and will act against it with all the means that we have." The last statement is particularly important, since it came from the nation most responsible for the Holocaust.

VII. Which way is best?

Proponents of vigorous prosecution of neo-Nazis, racist and Holocaust deniers argue that such laws and their strict enforcement is necessary to prevent the reemergence of Nazism, which, in a repeat of the events in pre-war Germany, is particularly attractive to individuals living in countries where unemployment and social dissatisfaction is high. Transitional societies are particularly vulnerable, and the post-Communist societies face the most acute problems. For example, even though 20 million Soviets perished during World War II following the Nazi invasion of 1941, neo-Nazi groups are rampant in today’s Russia and especially attractive to the disaffected youth.

Referring both to denial of the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide, Hilda Tchoboian, president of the European Armenian Federation, explained that "the hydra of denial is a tumor on freedom of expression."

Supporters of Holocaust denial laws also contend that these laws are necessary more than ever as the number of Holocaust survivors, eyewitnesses to the events, dwindles and the events recede into history. As a result, supporters contend, denial of the Holocaust is growing and such views are becoming more mainstream. Such supporters even argue for expansion of such laws to criminalize trans-border dissemination through the Internet, since the reach of Holocaust denier message in the current era of globalization has increased exponentially.

Opponents argue that such laws are incompatible with a democratic society. The hallmark of a true democracy, they argue, is not just protection of speech one agrees with but speech is which most hateful and despicable.

Like proponents, those opposed to such laws also make use of the slippery slope argument by contenting that criminal prosecution of Holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis and other racists can lead to prosecution of more benign activities and speech. Armenian-American student activist Garin K. Hovannisian, in direct response to Hilda Tchoboian’s statement above, argues:

Genocide denial might be a tumor on truth, memory, or even human dignity, but it's not even a pimple on the freedom of expression. It's an exercise - however false or disgusting - of that freedom,. . .A government that has the power to punish lies also has the power to punish truth (consider Turkey's law that punishes those who denigrate "Turkishness") and, really, to punish anything it pleases.

Some critics oppose such laws on practical grounds, arguing that prosecution of such individuals gives them a forum to disseminate their vile views and, since such trials are covered by the media, tons of free publicity.

For example, in the aftermath of his 1985 conviction in Canada, Zundel appeared for sentencing in black-face (indicating that white men could not receive justice in Canada), and carrying a cross, also inscribed with a "Freedom of Speech" motto. At a well-covered news conference, Zundel noted that the trial “cost me $40,000 in lost work -- but I got $1 million worth of publicity for my cause. It was well worth it."

Deborah Lipstadt, in reaction the jailing of David Irving in Austria, explained that even though she abhors Irving’s message, she is opposed to his imprisonment since it makes him, in some eyes, a hero of free speech and a martyr to fellow deniers.

Ultimately, such laws must be examined in their context. In the United States, the display of Nazi symbols may not need to be criminalized since the Holocaust did not take place on American soil. However, public display of a hate symbol exclusive to the United States – cross burning – can in certain instances be criminalized, according to a 2003 decision of the U.S Supreme Court (Virginia v. Black, 538 U.S. 343 (2003)), because of the potent symbol which a burning cross has played in the persecution of African-Americans since the end of the American Civil War and abolition of slavery.

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Professor Michael Bazyler is a leading authority on the use of American and European courts to redress genocide and other historical wrongs.

Bazyler is the author of the book Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America’s Courts (New York University Press, 2003, soft cover 2005), contributor of chapters to various books on genocide and the law, and the co-editor with Roger Alford of Holocaust Restitution: Perspectives on the Litigation and Its Legacy.

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Franklin H. Littell: A Christian Pioneer of Holocaust Studies

In Memoriam

May 2009 saw the loss of Dr. Franklin H. Littell, who was at times referred to as the Father of Holocaust Studies, especially in the United States. He died at age 91 after a long illness. Along with Dr. Littell’s family, friends, and former students. his passing was mourned by many in the international community of Holocaust scholars.

Franklin Littell was a Methodist minister who dedicated his life to Holocaust research after spending nearly 10 years in postwar Germany as chief Protestant religious adviser in the U.S. high command. An undisputed groundbreaker in his field, he was the first American scholar to offer courses on Holocaust and genocide studies, beginning with a graduate seminar he set up in 1959 at Emory University in Atlanta. In 1970, with Dr. Hubert Locke, he set up annual scholarly conferences on the Holocaust, a forum that continues through to the present time.

In 1976 Dr. Littell established at Temple University the nation's first doctoral program on Holocaust studies and founded a national institute on the Holocaust. In 1998, he and his wife, Dr. Marcia Sachs-Littell, established the first interdisciplinary master’s degree program in Holocaust studies at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

Franklin Littell authored more than two dozen books and 1,000 articles (he was apparently working most recently on his memoirs). The most well-known of his writings is the 1975 book, The Crucifixion of the Jews, which traces a direct connection between any church doctrine that teaches hatred of Jews and Judaism and the development of a worldview that allowed the Holocaust to happen. Dr. Littell’s challenge to the church to produce an in depth theological and ethical response to the Holocaust became a major thrust of his work for years to come. Pressing this point bore fruit. According to Holocaust scholar, John K. Roth, emeritus professor of philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, Dr. Littell “helped to turn the tide on the awareness of Christian complicity, shortcoming, indifference in the face of what was happening to Jews under Hitler.”

Dr. Littell impacted generations of future scholars and activists not only by the content of his writings and the higher education programs he established, but by their role in opening up development of Holocaust studies as a widely accepted field of scholarship. In the first decade or so following the end of World War II, there was little public discussion or study of the Holocaust. By the 1960s, however, the Eichmann trial and publication of books like Elie Wiesel’s “Night” and other survivor testimonies began to draw attention to the subject. “When Franklin Littell started his work,” said Dr. Roth, “it was almost the case that there was no such thing as Holocaust studies as a field.” That is no longer the case. Hundreds of colleges offer courses and programs on the Holocaust, and many public schools are required to teach about it.

In an essay eulogizing Dr. Littell, author JoAnn Magnuson, active for many years in Jewish-Christian relations and Holocaust studies expressed her gratitude for his “pioneering work in these fields.” She continued to explain. “In the 1950s, when I first began looking for information on the Holocaust, there was very little to be found. Even in the mid-1970s when I first discovered The Crucifixion of the Jews, it was quite possible for a serious student to have read most of the literature available on these topics. Today the bookshelves overflow and many colleges offer courses in Holocaust studies.”

The genesis of Franklin Littell’s passion for daring the world to respond to the Holocaust can be found in a defining moment in his life as a young man. It was 1939, and a 22-year-old Littell was traveling with other young co-religionists to a Christian youth conference in Amsterdam. They happen to pass through Nuremberg, Germany just in time to attend the great Nazi rally held there. Littell and his friends were horrified at the open racism and religious glorification of Aryans displayed there. When Adolf Hitler took the stage bathed with a god-like halo of lights and greeted with waves of adulation, they were so repulsed that they stood up and left. This reaction would come to typify Franklin Littell. He didn’t just write and teach – he acted. "He believed you could not hide behind the ivory tower of academia or the sanctity of the church," said Marcia Littell, currently professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Richard Stockton College. "You must be actively involved in all that you do."

A former student said of him, “He didn’t just have a front row seat to history; he was a part of history, and he brought that to every seminar. “

That inclination to stand up and act on his beliefs was also expressed in Dr. Littell’s enthusiastic support for the State of Israel, in part because he believed that its very existence refuted theologies that foresaw or favored the passing away of the Jewish people. He rejected any theology which teaches that the church has replaced the Jewish people in God’s plan, and wrote against what he called “traditional Christian myth about their [the Jews’] end in the historic process."

Shortly following the Six-Day War in 1967, Dr. Littell founded an organization called Christians Concerned for Israel, dedicated to promoting pro-Israel views in Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant churches. In 1978, along with Sister Rose Thering and Rev. David A. Lewis, Littell started the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel (NCLCI), which lobbied against arms sales to Arab nations and campaigned against the United Nations “Zionism=racism” resolution, adopted in 1975 and since repealed.

Dr. Littell did not shy away from warning a too often indifferent Christian church on the dangers of theology that could lead to hatred of the Jews. "A rise of Antisemitism is often the first seismographic reading on a serious shifting and shearing along the fault lines of bedrock Christianity,” he wrote. “The fundamental fault line...is a line of false teaching about the Jewish people."

In a world in which the public discourse has grown increasingly violent and unmannered, Franklin Littell tried to caution the world about the result of such a trend. On the occasion of the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, Dr. Littell wrote of “the Language of Assault, which prepares the way and justifies physical violence. It can never be justified under a legitimate government.” This was a point he had already made with force and eloquence in his 1965 tome, Wild Tongues: A Handbook of Social Pathology. Now, thirty years later he once again warned that “words have consequences in action. And the immediate result of a crescendo of irresponsible verbal assault can be marked in the burial of a hero of war and of peace a few weeks ago in Jerusalem.”

Franklin Littell was an influential thinker about early warnings of totalitarianism and of genocide, as was reviewed and evidenced in his contribution on early warnings in The Encyclopedia of Genocide, published in 1991.

Dr. Franklin Littell will be greatly missed by the many individuals who knew him, were taught by him, and were affected by his writings. The following testimonials describe several aspects of Franklin Littel’s contributions:

Dr. Hubert Locke, Dr. Littell’s longtime friend and colleague, co-founder of the Annual Scholar’s Conference on the Holocaust, and Professor Emeritus, University of Washington announced Dr. Littell’s death as follows:

"And the king said to his servants, do you not know that . . .a great man has fallen this day in Israel?" II Samuel 3:38

With profound sorrow, we wish to inform you of the death on Saturday, May 22nd, of Dr. Franklin H. Littell, Professor Emeritus of Temple University and Founder of the Annual Scholars' Conference. Dr. Littell served on the staff of the U.S. High Commissioner in Germany after World War II, taught at Emory and Southern Methodist Universities, the Chicago Theological Seminary, and was President of Iowa Wesleyan University.

His death marks the passing of a generation of outstanding Christian scholars who were the first to term the Holocaust a "crisis of faith" for the Christian world. A memorial is tentatively planned for October at the 39th Annual Scholars' Conference. "May he rest in peace and may his memory be a blessing."

Dr. Abraham J. Peck, Director, Academic Council for Religion, Genocide and Human Rights:

Baruch Dayan Emet---Blessed is the true Judge. These are the words that Jews repeat upon hearing the sad news of someone's death. In that blessing, God is honored as the true and righteous judge. The blessing affirms that God, whose wisdom we praise when the Creator of heaven and earth provides acts of goodness, is the very same Creator who decides the time of death.

With Franklin's passing, those words are more than appropriate. Allowing us to be a part of Franklin's life, to observe what surely must have been an act of the Divine in empowering him with the voice of the Prophets--he with the flowing white mane, the anger at the world as a bystander, the charge against the teaching of Christian contempt towards Judaism--was a privilege that could have only come from God. Hearing of his death tells us that his earthly work in repairing the world-- a task that he may not have finished, but that he undertook with a conviction and a purpose few have ever possessed--is no more.

I wrote the following words on the occasion of Frank's 80th birthday:

I have often wondered what if one, a hundred or a thousand Franklin Littells could have stood on the pulpits of churches in Europe and America in the 19th and 20 centuries. Would we have then had an end to the teaching of contempt?

Would Jewish identity and memory not have to be predicated to such a degree on the politics of victimization? Would my 14 murdered uncles and aunts, and their spouses and children, who died in the Holocaust, been a part of something only others know as an extended family?

But I quickly interrupt my daydream to bring myself back to reality. You are the only Franklin Littell and if I have to dream it is that your ministry will help to secure the future of my Jewish children and grandchildren.

Rest in peace, dear Frank, you have caused a revolution, you have helped to change the mind and path of Christianity, you have changed the world

Dr. Israel Charny, writing to Dr. Littell’s widow, Marcie:

In June 1982 Franklin Littell agreed to be the Keynote Speaker for our beleaguered First International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide in Tel Aviv. Elie Wiesel had resigned as President of the Conference. What's his name President of American Jewish Congress had agreed to keynote and pulled out at the last moment. Yad Vashem, where we were supposed to open the Congress canceled and literally closed the gates without a proper announcement to people arriving from overseas --we moved the Congress to the Hilton in Tel Aviv.

Franklin didn't hesitate. When he had convictions he acted on their behalf and didn't fold to totalitarian pressures. He gave a pre-Congress workshop: "Teaching the Holocaust and Genocide." He delivered the dramatic Opening Plenary: "The Holocaust as a Watershed Historical Event." He chaired a session -- so did you another session, Marcie. He ran a several-session "Track Session: Teaching about Genocide to One's Own People and to Other Peoples" (in which you too presented, Marcie). He chaired another Plenary. He chaired another session, "The Holocaust and God" (who else would confront the latter, I add?). And more and more up to and including participation in the Conference Summation Panel.

His contribution was enormous and unforgettable.

Personally, in addition to the Congress, and especially in my earlier more youthful years, I gained so very much from Franklin of basic ideas, inspiration, and encouragement. It was always a pleasure to see him and speak with him. He was as free of posturing and academic manipulativeness as they come-- a mensch.

Marcie, please accept my personal condolences, as I too join a whole world of Holocaust and genocide scholars in honoring and loving Franklin.

Selected Writing by Franklin H. Littell

Littell, Franklin H. (1969). Wild Tongues: A Handbook of Social Pathology. New York: Macmillan.

Littell, Franklin H. (1975). The Crucifixion of the Jews. New York: Harper and Row.

Littell, Franklin H. (1988). Early warning. Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 3(4), 483-490.

Littell, Franklin H. (1999). Early Warning System (EWS). In Charny, Israel W. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Genocide. Boulder, CO: ABC-Clio, pp. 261-265.

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