The Business of Holocaust Denial

I'm not typically one to shout my politics from the rooftops, but there are times when silence is a crime. As Elie Wiesel said, "The opposite of love is not hate, but indifference."

Iran has hosted a conference to promote Holocaust denial. It was attended by young people, students. Holocaust denial is gaining popularity -- it's not just Hutton Gibson anymore. There are young people being taught this very minute that the murder of six million Jews, more than two million of them children, did not happen. There are young people being taught not that the Holocaust was one of the worst chapters in human history, but that it is instead a myth created by Jews. Young people are being taught right now not that babies were thrown in the air and shot, that some rabbis given the duty of putting bodies into the incinerators chose to leap into the flames themselves, but instead that the Jews made up such stories in an effort to dupe the world into giving them money.

Whatever you believe about Europe's penalty for Holocaust-denial, whatever your opinion on the policies of the Israeli government, you must stand for truth.

When I first read of Holocaust-denial, I felt sickened by it, but I didn't really think through the long-term implications of such widespread lies. Of course, of course, Holocaust-denial causes pain for Jews, especially for those who survived concentration camps and lost loved ones, and for the children of survivors. There are few things more damaging to say to someone than, "That which haunts and hurts you and has nearly killed you does not exist. Your pain is a lie. The pain of your loved ones is a lie." Beyond the hurt, the frustration, and the absolute isolation the Jewish community must surely feel at such accusations, there is a future at stake. One day the last Holocaust survivor will be buried, taking with him or her the last blue tatoo. One day the last American soldier who wept upon entering Auschwitz, too, will die, taking with him the last memory of walking skeletons, mass graves. One day the Shoah will be something no one remembers first-hand. At that point, each human being will have to weigh the evidence, the textbooks claiming the brutal murder of so many Jews, the textbooks claiming a grand plot to cry genocide and gain profit. Each person will make a choice. Each person, good or evil, will make a choice based on the evidence.

Writers are being paid right now to deny the Holocaust. People are being paid. This is a business. The "evidence" against the Jews is being created and distributed. I would like to believe truth always wins. But does it?

And what happens when the "evidence" against the Holocaust is enough to convince most people? What will those poeple think of Jews? What in the world is there to prevent history from repeating itself?