Imagine a story so terrible, so widely known, that some people still try to say it never happened. This isn't just about forgetting the past. It's about actively changing it, trying to make a dark chapter in human history disappear. These efforts are not just wrong, they are dangerous.

At The Lost Feed, we often look back at forgotten viral moments. But some stories are too important to ever be forgotten, even if some wish they were. Understanding how denial works is key to protecting the truth.

What the Holocaust Really Was

To begin, we need a clear picture of what we are talking about. The term Holocaust describes the organized, government-backed killing of about six million Jewish people. It also includes the murder of up to half a million Roma, Sinti, and other groups seen as "gypsies" by the Nazi government and its helpers.

This terrible period also saw other groups targeted. Disabled people and Slavs were killed for being thought of as "inferior." Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals were persecuted for their beliefs or way of life. Experts believe that the Nazi regime caused the deaths of 11 to 20 million people in total during its 12 years in power.

Inside Holocaust Denial: What It

Is and Why It Matters

Holocaust denial is more than just disagreeing with history. It's a deliberate effort to deny, change, or play down the proven facts about the Nazi killings of Jewish people, Roma, and others. The main goal of this denial is to make Nazism seem acceptable again as a political idea.

Nazism is deeply tied to racism, anti-Semitism (hatred of Jewish people), and mass murder. Because of this, it has been widely rejected around the world. Deniers try to remove this stain from Nazism. They twist facts, ignore evidence, and misrepresent history to make Nazism and its related ideas seem okay again. This means Holocaust denial is a form of political action driven by hate and prejudice.

The Core

Claims of Denial

Richard Evans, a respected historian, summarized the main beliefs often held by Holocaust deniers in his book, Lying about Hitler. He explained that deniers typically claim several key points:

(a) The number of Jews killed by the Nazis was far less than 6 million; it amounted to only a few hundred thousand, and was thus similar to, or less than, the number of German civilians killed in Allied bombing raids.

(b) Gas chambers were not used to kill large numbers of Jews at any time.

(c) Neither Hitler nor the Nazi leadership in general had a program of exterminating Europe's Jews; all they wished to do was to deport them to Eastern Europe.

(d) "The Holocaust" was a myth invented by Allied propaganda during the war and sustained since then by Jews who wished to use it for political and financial support for the state of Israel or for themselves. The supposed evidence for the Nazis' wartime mass murder of millions of Jews by gassing and other means was fabricated after the war.

These claims directly go against mountains of historical evidence, eyewitness accounts, and official documents from the time.

The Deceptive

Methods of Those Who Deny

Holocaust deniers use various tricks to achieve their goals of twisting or denying historical facts. It is crucial to understand that these people are not real historians. Historians look at facts from sources and then interpret events. Deniers, however, start with a political idea and then try to bend facts to fit it.

Since the late 1970s, deniers have tried to look more credible. They copy the style of real historians and call themselves "revisionists." This term implies they are simply revising history, but they do not deserve it. True historical revision happens when new evidence or fresh ideas lead to a better understanding of events.

As Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman explain in their book, Denying History:

Historians are the ones who should be described as revisionists. To receive a Ph.D. and become a professional historian, one must write an original work with research based on primary documents and new sources, reexamining or reinterpreting some historical event, in other words, revising knowledge about that event only. This is not to say, however, that revision is done for revision’s sake; it is done when new evidence or new interpretations call for a revision.

Historians have revised and continue to revise what we know about the Holocaust. But their revision entails refinement of detailed knowledge about events, rarely complete denial of the events themselves, and certainly not denial of the cumulation of events known as the Holocaust.

Deniers often use arguments based on half-truths, fake records, and hints to mislead people. They make up evidence, use fake academic arguments, pick and choose sources, and make wild claims about big conspiracies led by Jewish people.

How Deniers Twist History

Let's look at an example of how a prominent denier, David Irving, operated. Evans discusses this in Lying about Hitler. For a long time, Irving claimed that Adolf Hitler was not responsible for the Holocaust. He even said Hitler didn't know about the murder of Jewish people.

In his 1977 book, Hitler's War, Irving wrote about a phone call. He claimed that on November 30, 1941, Hitler ordered that Jews were "not to be liquidated." Irving referred to this as "incontrovertible evidence" that Hitler stopped the killing of Jews.

But what did the phone log actually say? The original document, a phone note from Himmler on November 30, 1941, includes a few points:

• Arrest of Dr. Jekelius

• Supposed son of Molotov

• Jew-transport from Berlin.

• no liquidation

Richard Evans points out that any reasonable person would see that "no liquidation" referred to one specific transport, not all Jewish people. This interpretation is supported by checking other historical facts.

We know from German railway documents that a deportation train of Berlin Jews was headed to Riga on November

27. The Berlin Gestapo had ordered this. We also know that the order for "no liquidation" for this specific transport came too late.

On the same day as the phone call, the SS leader in Latvia, Friedrich Jeckeln, reported that about a thousand German Jews from this transport had been shot. Himmler later scolded Jeckeln for killing these German Jews. Just days before, German Jews had also been shot in large numbers in Kaunas after being deported there.

Irving's story doesn't match the timeline or logic. Himmler met Hitler *after

• this phone call, not before, as Irving claimed. Also, if Hitler truly didn't know about the murders, how could he order them to stop?

From this example, we can see how deniers like Irving work:

• They pick out a small part of a document that fits their idea, like "no liquidation."

• They leave out crucial parts, such as "Jew-transport from Berlin," which gives the phrase its real meaning.

• They don't put the document in its full historical context. They ignore that the order was for one specific transport and went against earlier and later acts of murder.

• They lie about the context they do provide, like when Himmler met Hitler.

• Based on these distortions, they create a historical story that fits their political ideas, even if it doesn't match the facts. Irving's claim that Hitler stopped the killings doesn't even fit his own logic that Hitler didn't know about them.

Why Understanding This History Still Matters

The attempts to deny the Holocaust are not just academic debates. They are dangerous efforts to rewrite history and spread hate. By understanding the real facts and the deceptive methods of deniers, we can better protect the truth.

Historians continue to research and learn more about the Holocaust. They add to our knowledge, but they do not deny the core events. This dedication to truth, based on evidence and careful study, is what separates real history from politically motivated lies.

Even decades later, the Holocaust remains a powerful lesson about humanity's capacity for both cruelty and resilience. When we refuse to let the past be distorted, we honor the victims and ensure that such horrors are never repeated. Knowing the truth, and how others try to hide it, is our best defense against the return of dangerous ideas.