Historians describe the Holocaust, or the Shoah, as the best documented genocide in history.[1] Yet, the distortion and denial of the Nazi regime’s systematic murder of six million Jewish people during World War II are widespread. More than eighty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, large numbers of people worldwide either deny the Holocaust or are unaware that it ever happened.[2] Combating denial and distortion of the Holocaust is critical to upholding historical truth and to preventing antisemitic ideologies that led to the genocide of the Jewish people.[3]

Historical Evidence’s Waning Effect

Indisputable historical evidence for the Holocaust includes authentic and extensive German documentation, photos, films, survivor testimony, Nazi confessions, and physical evidence collected from the camps.[4] Attested German records prove the killing of millions of Jewish people—historians assess the death toll as somewhere between 5.8 and 7 million based on statistical reports of the ghettos, concentration camps, and mass murder operations.[5] During post-war trials of Nazi leaders, prosecutors presented 3,000 documents. While defendants claimed they were following orders, they never denied the reality of the killings.[6]

Despite overwhelming historical evidence, only 54 percent of the global population has heard of the Holocaust, according to a recent Anti-Defamation League survey.[7] Those who are aware of its existence, particularly in North America and Europe, assert numerous false allegations. They include claiming the genocide of the Jewish people never happened, the Nazis lacked an actual extermination policy, or that gas chambers never existed.[8] Holocaust distortion, a growing phenomenon, minimizes the number of Jewish victims and questions the authenticity of historical evidence.[9] Proponents maintain that disease, starvation, or Allied bombings contributed to the death toll.[10] Many also claim the Jewish people invented or exaggerated the Holocaust to extort reparations from Germany, to gain power, or to elicit sympathy to justify the creation of the State of Israel.[11] According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, “The goal is to make the Jews culpable and antisemitism once again legitimate.”[12]

Younger generations fare the worst in their understanding of the Holocaust. According to the Claims Conference’s U.S. Millennial Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Survey, 63 percent of Gen Z and Millennial respondents did not know that six million Jewish people were murdered in the Holocaust.[13] Also, 48 percent of the respondents could not name even one of the 40,000 camps or ghettos in Europe, and 11 percent believed the Jewish people caused the Holocaust. While most American adults are familiar with the Holocaust, they also struggle to accurately answer how many Jewish people perished.[14]

The Roots of Holocaust Denial and Distortion

The roots of Holocaust denial and distortion extend back to the time of the Nazi regime, during which perpetrators attempted to hide their intent to murder an entire people.[15] Once the Nazis started losing the war, they began destroying documents, crematoria, and other evidence of genocide.[16] The denial and distortion also continued post-war when former Nazis and sympathizers tried to rehabilitate Hitler’s image. Individuals, like Paul Rassinier, a French writer imprisoned at Buchenwald—a forced labor camp that oversaw eighty-eight subcamps[17]—tried to apply their limited experience of one particular concentration camp to all other camps.[18]

In the United States, organizations like the Institute for Historical Review, founded in 1978 by Willis Carto, tried to frame Holocaust denial in pseudo-academic terms. Pseudo-historians have consistently been debunked by reputable Holocaust historians, like American scholar Deborah Lipstadt who, in 1996, brought a legal case against discredited British historian and Holocaust denier David Irving. Lipstadt accused Irving of being a Nazi sympathizer and a dishonest researcher, resulting in Irving suing her for libel. Lipstadt prevailed when the court found Irving an antisemitic promoter of neo-Nazism.[19]

In the Muslim world, Holocaust denial is prevalent, including Muslim-majority countries like the Arab States, Iran, Indonesia, and Malaysia, but it is also sometimes promoted by Muslim leaders in Western countries.[20] Iran is one of the biggest culprits of Holocaust denial, preventing Holocaust education among its citizens.[21] Still, there are some Holocaust educational efforts underway in the Arab world where denial and distortion are being addressed. For example, Morocco’s king, Mohammed VI, called the Holocaust “one of the most tragic chapters in modern history.”[22]

Today, the growing phenomenon of universalizing the Holocaust, which removes the particularity of the Jewish people’s unique experience by comparing it to all racism and xenophobia, also contributes to Holocaust denialism.[23] Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, remarked in a speech during a recent International Holocaust Remembrance Day event that “a ‘universalized’ Holocaust, unmoored from its Jewish anchor, is more than dangerous – it is also immoral . . . because the Holocaust took everything from its Jewish victims. It took their homes and their valuables. It took their freedom and their dignity. And ultimately, it took their lives and their future.”[24]

Worse than universalizing the Holocaust, “Holocaust inversion,” another recent phenomenon exacerbated by the Hamas-Israel war, equates Israeli policy with that of the Nazis and perceives Palestinians as the “new Jewish victims.”[25] But, according to the World Jewish Congress, a territorial and political conflict cannot compare with the systematic plan to destroy European Jewry.[26]

Denial and Distortion in Social Media

The primary means of spreading, and even glorifying, Holocaust denial and distortion today is through social media. A 2022 UNESCO report examining 4,000 content items from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter (X) found that more than 16 percent of Holocaust-related content denied or distorted the basic facts. Telegram, a social media channel with few restrictions and little content moderation, contains material related to the Holocaust, with half featuring denial or distortion; 17 percent of TikTok’s and 8 percent of Facebook’s Holocaust-related material highlighted denial or distortion.[27]

Facebook eventually deplatformed Holocaust deniers, but only in 2020 did Facebook and X create official policies against Holocaust denial.[28] Facebook’s recent policies resulted in banning 250 white supremacist organizations as well as militia groups and QAnon, taking down 22.5 million pieces of hate speech, and banning antisemitic stereotypes.[29] Yet, in 2023, Holocaust denial can still be found on Facebook and X. Right-wing extremists use darker corners of the internet to promote their hate on less monitored channels like 4chan and 8chan. Holocaust denial and distortion on social media is a global phenomenon that many countries still have not thoroughly addressed.

Legal Responses to Holocaust Denial

Holocaust deniers can be prosecuted for racial defamation and hate crimes due to laws in certain countries within Western Europe and in Canada. Many European countries criminalize Nazi messaging, including denial of the Holocaust, and some like Germany and Austria enforce these laws, while others do so sporadically.[30] Holocaust denial is illegal in Israel, but in other places, like the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Scandinavia, free speech and a free press override other rights.[31]

In the United States, the First Amendment protects free speech. Organizations that promote Holocaust denial and distortion employ “free speech” arguments to promote their antisemitic literature and online publications, falsely claiming Jewish people overstate the Holocaust through their control of the media.[32] For the United States, more speech, rather than restricted speech, is considered the solution to Holocaust denial or hate speech.[33] Laws in the United States also protect free speech rights on digital platforms and do not require them to regulate their online content.[34]

Combatting Holocaust Denial and Distortion

Holocaust denial and distortion flounders before the weight of evidence that supports the enormous death toll and the horrific suffering Jewish people experienced at the camps. On October 9, 1981, Judge Thomas T. Johnson of the California Superior Court ruled that “the Holocaust is not reasonably subject to dispute. It is capable of immediate and accurate determination by resort to resources of reasonable indisputable accuracy. It is simply a fact.”[35]

Countering Holocaust denial and distortion not only preserves historical accuracy but protects those victimized by brutal regimes, in this case the Jewish people. It is critical to combat because Holocaust denial and distortion can lead to violent extremism.[36] Denying or minimizing the mass atrocities of the Holocaust exacerbates classic antisemitic tropes, which further perpetuates antisemitism and persecution of Jewish people today.

Education and memorialization are tools in combating historical fallacy. The American Jewish Committee advises several ways to combat Holocaust denial and distortion: Begin by condemning it, promote Holocaust education and teacher training, and urge elected officials and community leaders to condemn Holocaust comparisons.[37] Some organizations, like Auschwitz.org, provide material to fight Holocaust denial and distortion online.[38] This organization encourages reporting denial claims and hate speech on social media platforms. They also provide materials and links to promote historical truth. UNESCO recommends adding fact-check labels to social media posts about the Holocaust and to send consumers to the joint UNESCO and World Jewish Congress website aboutholocaust.org.

Many Jewish people perceive Holocaust perpetrators as Christians—as baptized church members—who stood by while Jewish people were sent to their deaths.[39] Thus, it is crucial for Christians, especially, to combat the phenomenon of Holocaust distortion and denial. According to history professor Richard Pierard, “Although Holocaust deniers may try to infiltrate our ranks, we as evangelicals must sound forth a firm and deliberate ‘NO’ to all efforts of deniers to spread their pernicious ideas among us.”[40]

Christians can find resources at the Coalition Against Antisemitism about fighting antisemitism, including Holocaust distortion and denial.[41] As the number of Holocaust survivors diminishes, it is incumbent upon all to engage in education about its horrors to prevent past events from reoccurring, to preserve the memory of the Jewish people who lost their lives, and to honor the Jewish people through whom the Jewish Messiah redeemed all nations.