Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion

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Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion

IHRA’s 31 member countries adopted the “Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion” at IHRA’s Plenary meeting in Toronto on 10 October 2013.

The Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion was developed by IHRA experts in the Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial in cooperation with IHRA’s governmental representatives for use as a working tool.

Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion

The present definition is an expression of the awareness that Holocaust denial and distortion have to be challenged and denounced nationally and internationally and need examination at a global level. IHRA hereby adopts the following legally non-binding working definition as its working tool.

Holocaust denial is discourse and propaganda that deny the historical reality and the extent of the extermination of the Jews by the Nazis and their accomplices during World War II, known as the Holocaust or the Shoah. Holocaust denial refers specifically to any attempt to claim that the Holocaust/Shoah did not take place.

Holocaust denial may include publicly denying or calling into doubt the use of principal mechanisms of destruction (such as gas chambers, mass shooting, starvation and torture) or the intentionality of the genocide of the Jewish people.

Holocaust denial in its various forms is an expression of antisemitism. The attempt to deny the genocide of the Jews is an effort to exonerate National Socialism and antisemitism from guilt or responsibility in the genocide of the Jewish people. Forms of Holocaust denial also include blaming the Jews for either exaggerating or creating the Shoah for political or financial gain as if the Shoah itself was the result of a conspiracy plotted by the Jews. In this, the goal is to make the Jews culpable and antisemitism once again legitimate.

The goals of Holocaust denial often are the rehabilitation of an explicit antisemitism and the promotion of political ideologies and conditions suitable for the advent of the very type of event it denies.

Distortion of the Holocaust refers, inter alia, to:

Intentional efforts to excuse or minimize the impact of the Holocaust or its principal elements, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany;
Gross minimization of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources;
Attempts to blame the Jews for causing their own genocide;
Statements that cast the Holocaust as a positive historical event. Those statements are not Holocaust denial but are closely connected to it as a radical form of antisemitism. They may suggest that the Holocaust did not go far enough in accomplishing its goal of “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question”;
Attempts to blur the responsibility for the establishment of concentration and death camps devised and operated by Nazi Germany by putting blame on other nations or ethnic groups.

To be clear:
This is not meant to be a discussion thread...

It is meant to enlighten as to what the term refers to...

If there is an update I am not aware of, please advise...

perfectly LEGAL but NOT "perfectly fine." just because something is not specifically illegal doesn't automatically make it "fine." there are other valid concerns besides legality.

enthusiastic about yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre? espousing holocaust denial in this racist powder keg of a nation is in the same existential category IMHO. at this point, it's between you and god.

not a lover of free speech ?

I'm not sure how a view on something can be illegal. Especially when the accepted conclusion for nuking two cities in Japan is that it 'saved lives'. Truth fears no enemy.

A land invasion of Japan was estimated to be more costly in both American and allied lives as well as Japanese lives.
The carnage during the invasion of Okinawa, or for that matter any of the Pacific islands, was a good indicator of what was to come.
And yes, a land invasion is what was in store for Japan had it not been for the nukes.

There was no need for a land invasion as Japan had already agreed to surrender after changing their leadership in the spring of that year. The deal was that the Emperor had to be left alone. So we can ignore that propaganda. The US had spent a lot of money on the nukes and wanted to use them for that reason. If you're going to be consistent then you say it would have been justified for Germany to nuke Poland rather than invading them.

That's because you have been lied to. Those that win wars write the "history". No they didn't need to be "taken down" as i already said, they had already agreed to surrender and sought a deal. A lot of Russians realised they had been lied to when the Soviet Union collapsed. Of course it should work like that if a country has agreed to surrender. This isn't some macho game, we are talking about hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians being nuked as well as wildlife, not to mention all the aftermath.

Well Poland had been treating German people in Poland poorly but ok.

Then imagine Germany nuked the US. Or Vietnam nuked the US if they had nukes?