BBJ and Mike, please read the following arguments regarding Holocaust "revisionism" or denial and tell me your thoughts:
I would argue that Holocaust "revisionism" or "denial" is completely off-limits for us as Christian scholars, and in fact it is quite dangerous in even the most general sense.
1) It leads people to be confused as to what had really happened, and it spreads doubt in the public mind. A few years ago (1992) the American Jewish Committee commissioned a survey by the Roper Organization. Of those polled 22 percent agreed with the statement: "Does it seems possible or does it seem impossible to you that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened" and 12 percent said they "didn't know." The worst figures were found in the 18 to 29 age group (24% agreed and 17% didn't know) and among those who were not high school graduates (20% agreed and 27% didn't know). Also, 23 percent of those who identified themselves as "conservatives" assented to the possibility that the extermination of the Jews may not have occurred. To be sure, some serious methodological questions have been raised about this poll, and the conclusions may be more pessimistic that the evidence justifies-see Novick, Holocaust in American Life, pp. 271-72..
Nevertheless, the level of public ignorance makes it easy for the more "respectable" to engage in their deceptions. Beneath the surface, the deniers are bigots who hate Jews, racial minorities, and democracy in general. But they have adopted the outward appearance of the rationalist and avoided that of the extremist. They project the appearance of being committed to the very values that they in truth despise--reason, accuracy, critical rules of evidence, the honest search for historical truth. In an appeal clearly aimed at Christian intellectuals, George Brewer wrote in the first issue of The Revisionist: A Journal of Independent Thought (November 1999): "Whether we will be able to successfully skeet the other clay feet of the hegemonic ideology of liberal Secular Humanism depends on how well we defend the right to think differently about the Jewish catastrophe, as much as anything else."
2) Holocaust denial is at the core a threat to all who believe that knowledge and memory are keystones of our civilization. The Holocaust is not merely a tragedy of the Jews but a tragedy of civilization in which the victims were Jews. It was carried out by a highly advanced technological society, by people who were products of one of the best educational systems in the world. Thus to deny its reality is not a threat just to Jewish history but a threat to all who believe in the power of reason. Holocaust denial repudiates reasoned discussion in much the same way that the Holocaust itself repudiated civilized values. It is the ultimate glorification of irrationalism.
3) Holocaust denial reflects the direction that the intellectual climate in the scholarly world has taken in the last quarter century. The deniers are plying their trade at time when much of history seems to be up for grabs and attacks on the Western rationalist tradition have become commonplace. There are no objective truths; there is no one version of the world that is necessarily right while another is wrong. Every conceptual system is as good as another. One cannot dismiss out of hand even the most far-fetched notions simply because they are absurd.
Modern deconstructionist thought argues that experience is relative and nothing is fixed. Thus, this atmosphere of intellectual permissiveness makes it difficult for people to assert that anything is false or off-limits. How can one say that the Holocaust denial is a movement with no scholarly, intellectual, or rational validity? After all, no fact, no event, no aspect of history has any fixed meaning or content. Any truth can be retold. Any fact can be recast. There is no ultimate historical reality. Knowledge dissolves into nothingness.
4) Holocaust denial rehabilitates anti-Semitism in the modern world. As Walter Reich, a former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, wrote in the New York Times on July 11,1993, the deniers, "by convincing the world that the great crime for which anti-Semitism was blamed simply never happened-indeed, that it was nothing more than a frame-up invented by Jews, and propagated by them through their control of the media," make anti-Semitic arguments seem once again respectable in civilized discourse and even acceptable for governments to pursue anti-Semitic policies. Holocaust denial makes the world safe for anti-Semitism, and in effect, as historian Yehuda Bauer has said in my hearing, creates the preconditions that would deny the Jewish people the right to live in the post-Holocaust world. Or as French literary historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet puts it: "It is an attempt at extermination on paper that pursues in another register the actual work of extermination. One revives the dead in order the better to strike the living." (Assassins of Memory, p. 24)
5) Finally, Holocaust denial is a deterrent to exploring the deep effects which sin has on human society. Historians, theologians, philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists have sought to explain the Holocaust by asking the most fundamental question of all about the human condition: "Why did this happen?" As we explore the matter ourselves, we as Christian scholars are prepared to include human sin as a root cause. However, the deniers respond: "It didn't happen." Thus, we don't need to ask this ultimate question about human failure. But as Christian scholars, is this not the very place where we should begin our inquiry?
Why evangelical scholars must reject it
I would argue that Holocaust "revisionism" or "denial" is completely off-limits for us as Christian scholars, and in fact it is quite dangerous in even the most general sense.
1) It leads people to be confused as to what had really happened, and it spreads doubt in the public mind. A few years ago (1992) the American Jewish Committee commissioned a survey by the Roper Organization. Of those polled 22 percent agreed with the statement: "Does it seems possible or does it seem impossible to you that the Nazi extermination of the Jews never happened" and 12 percent said they "didn't know." The worst figures were found in the 18 to 29 age group (24% agreed and 17% didn't know) and among those who were not high school graduates (20% agreed and 27% didn't know). Also, 23 percent of those who identified themselves as "conservatives" assented to the possibility that the extermination of the Jews may not have occurred. To be sure, some serious methodological questions have been raised about this poll, and the conclusions may be more pessimistic that the evidence justifies-see Novick, Holocaust in American Life, pp. 271-72..
Nevertheless, the level of public ignorance makes it easy for the more "respectable" to engage in their deceptions. Beneath the surface, the deniers are bigots who hate Jews, racial minorities, and democracy in general. But they have adopted the outward appearance of the rationalist and avoided that of the extremist. They project the appearance of being committed to the very values that they in truth despise--reason, accuracy, critical rules of evidence, the honest search for historical truth. In an appeal clearly aimed at Christian intellectuals, George Brewer wrote in the first issue of The Revisionist: A Journal of Independent Thought (November 1999): "Whether we will be able to successfully skeet the other clay feet of the hegemonic ideology of liberal Secular Humanism depends on how well we defend the right to think differently about the Jewish catastrophe, as much as anything else."
2) Holocaust denial is at the core a threat to all who believe that knowledge and memory are keystones of our civilization. The Holocaust is not merely a tragedy of the Jews but a tragedy of civilization in which the victims were Jews. It was carried out by a highly advanced technological society, by people who were products of one of the best educational systems in the world. Thus to deny its reality is not a threat just to Jewish history but a threat to all who believe in the power of reason. Holocaust denial repudiates reasoned discussion in much the same way that the Holocaust itself repudiated civilized values. It is the ultimate glorification of irrationalism.
3) Holocaust denial reflects the direction that the intellectual climate in the scholarly world has taken in the last quarter century. The deniers are plying their trade at time when much of history seems to be up for grabs and attacks on the Western rationalist tradition have become commonplace. There are no objective truths; there is no one version of the world that is necessarily right while another is wrong. Every conceptual system is as good as another. One cannot dismiss out of hand even the most far-fetched notions simply because they are absurd.
Modern deconstructionist thought argues that experience is relative and nothing is fixed. Thus, this atmosphere of intellectual permissiveness makes it difficult for people to assert that anything is false or off-limits. How can one say that the Holocaust denial is a movement with no scholarly, intellectual, or rational validity? After all, no fact, no event, no aspect of history has any fixed meaning or content. Any truth can be retold. Any fact can be recast. There is no ultimate historical reality. Knowledge dissolves into nothingness.
4) Holocaust denial rehabilitates anti-Semitism in the modern world. As Walter Reich, a former director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, wrote in the New York Times on July 11,1993, the deniers, "by convincing the world that the great crime for which anti-Semitism was blamed simply never happened-indeed, that it was nothing more than a frame-up invented by Jews, and propagated by them through their control of the media," make anti-Semitic arguments seem once again respectable in civilized discourse and even acceptable for governments to pursue anti-Semitic policies. Holocaust denial makes the world safe for anti-Semitism, and in effect, as historian Yehuda Bauer has said in my hearing, creates the preconditions that would deny the Jewish people the right to live in the post-Holocaust world. Or as French literary historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet puts it: "It is an attempt at extermination on paper that pursues in another register the actual work of extermination. One revives the dead in order the better to strike the living." (Assassins of Memory, p. 24)
5) Finally, Holocaust denial is a deterrent to exploring the deep effects which sin has on human society. Historians, theologians, philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists have sought to explain the Holocaust by asking the most fundamental question of all about the human condition: "Why did this happen?" As we explore the matter ourselves, we as Christian scholars are prepared to include human sin as a root cause. However, the deniers respond: "It didn't happen." Thus, we don't need to ask this ultimate question about human failure. But as Christian scholars, is this not the very place where we should begin our inquiry?
Why evangelical scholars must reject it
