The varying forms of Holocaust denial

Prof. Dina Porat

As we have seen, a major expression of contemporary Far-right antisemitism is Holocaust denial in its varying forms and degrees, including Holocaust distortion, minimalization and trivialization. However, Holocaust denial is not limited to the Far-right, and can be found in its different forms in all spheres from which antisemitism emerges today.

What is Holocaust denial? What forms does it take? Why are they defined as manifestations of antisemitism?

• Bauer, Yehuda, “A Past that Will Not Go Away,” in Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck, eds., The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 12–22.

• Evans, Richard J., In Defense of History, (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999).

• Lipstadt, Deborah E., Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New York: Free Press, 1993).

• Shermer, Michael and Alex Grobman, Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).

• Wistrich, Robert S., Holocaust Denial: The politics of perfidy (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2012).

• Wodak, Ruth, “Saying the Unsayable: Denying the Holocaust in Media Debates in Austria and the UK,” Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict.,vol. 3, no. 1 (2015), pp. 13 – 40.