Editing Holocaust denial (section)

===Institute for Historical Review===
In 1978 the American [[far-right]] activist [[Willis Carto]] founded the [[Institute for Historical Review]] (IHR), an organization dedicated to publicly challenging the commonly accepted history of the Holocaust.<ref name="TooCloseForComfort">{{cite book |first1=Chip |last1=Berlet |first2=Matthew J. |last2=Lyons |title=Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort |location=New York |publisher=[[Guilford Press]] |date=2000 |page=189}}</ref> The IHR's founding was inspired by [[Austin App]], a [[La Salle University|La Salle]] professor of medieval English literature and considered the first major American holocaust denier.{{R|Atkins, Stephen E. 2009 pp. 153}} The IHR sought from the beginning to establish itself within the broad tradition of historical revisionism, by soliciting token supporters who were not from a [[neo-Nazi]] background such as [[James J. Martin (historian)|James J. Martin]] and [[Samuel Edward Konkin III]], and by promoting the writings of French socialist Paul Rassinier and American anti-war historian Harry Elmer Barnes, in an attempt to show that Holocaust denial had a base of support beyond neo-Nazis. The IHR republished most of Barnes's writings, which had been out of print since his death. While it included articles on other topics and sold books by mainstream historians, the majority of material published and distributed by IHR was devoted to questioning the facts surrounding the Holocaust.<ref>{{cite book |first=Richard J. |last=Evans |title=Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial |publisher=[[Basic Books]] |date=2002 |isbn=0-465-02153-0}}</ref>{{page needed|date=June 2020}}

In 1980, the IHR promised a $50,000 reward to anyone who could prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. [[Mel Mermelstein]] wrote a [[letter to the editor]]s of the ''[[Los Angeles Times]]'' and others including ''[[The Jerusalem Post]]''. The IHR wrote back, offering him $50,000 for proof that Jews were, in fact, gassed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Mermelstein, in turn, submitted a notarized account of his internment at Auschwitz and how he witnessed Nazi guards ushering his mother and two sisters and others towards (as he learned later) gas chamber number five. Despite this, the IHR refused to pay the reward. Represented by public interest attorney [[William John Cox]], Mermelstein subsequently sued the IHR in the [[Superior Court of Los Angeles County]] for [[breach of contract]], [[anticipatory repudiation]], [[libel]], [[injurious denial of established fact]], [[intentional infliction of emotional distress]], and [[declaratory relief]]. On October 9, 1981, both parties in the Mermelstein case filed motions for [[summary judgment]] in consideration of which Judge Thomas T. Johnson of the [[Superior Court of Los Angeles County]] took "[[judicial notice]] of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944,"<ref name="NYT">{{cite news |title=California Judge Rules Holocaust Did Happen |date=October 10, 1981 |page=A26 |newspaper=[[The New York Times]] |agency=[[Associated Press]] |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/10/us/california-judge-rules-holocaust-did-happen.html |access-date=November 20, 2010 |archive-date=October 19, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181019142015/https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/10/us/california-judge-rules-holocaust-did-happen.html |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name="order">{{cite web |url=http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/m/mermelstein.mel/ftp.py?people/m/mermelstein.mel//mermelstein.order.072285 |title=Mel Mermelstein v. Institute for Historical Review Judgment and Statement of Record |access-date=November 20, 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110717102709/http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/people/m/mermelstein.mel/ftp.py?people%2Fm%2Fmermelstein.mel%2F%2Fmermelstein.order.072285 |archive-date=July 17, 2011 |url-status=dead}}</ref> judicial notice meaning that the court treated the gas chambers as common knowledge, and therefore did not require evidence that the gas chambers existed. On August 5, 1985, Judge Robert A. Wenke entered a judgment based upon the [[Stipulation]] for Entry of Judgment agreed upon by the parties on July 22, 1985. The judgment required IHR and other defendants to pay $90,000 to Mermelstein and to issue a letter of apology to "Mr. Mel Mermelstein, a [[Holocaust survivors|survivor]] of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, and all other survivors of Auschwitz" for "pain, anguish and suffering" caused to them.{{R|order}}

In the "About the IHR" statement on their website, the IHR states, "The IHR does not 'deny' the Holocaust. Indeed, the IHR as such has no 'position' on any specific event...."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://ihr.org/main/about.shtml|title=About the IHR: Our Mission and Record |date=May 2018 |work=Institute for Historical Review |access-date=July 9, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071013154000/http://ihr.org/main/about.shtml |archive-date=October 13, 2007 |url-status=dead}}</ref> British historian [[Richard J. Evans]] wrote that the Institute's acknowledgment "that a relatively small number of Jews were killed" was a means to draw attention away from its primary beliefs, i.e. that the number of victims was not in the millions and that Jews were not systematically murdered in gas chambers.<ref>[[Richard J. Evans]]. ''Telling Lies About Hitler: The Holocaust, History and the David Irving Trial'', [[Verso Books]], 2002, {{ISBN|1-85984-417-0}}, p. 151. Quote: Like many individual Holocaust deniers, the Institute as a body denied that it was involved in Holocaust denial. It called this a 'smear' which was 'completely at variance with the facts' because 'revisionist scholars' such as Faurisson, Butz 'and bestselling British historian David Irving acknowledge that hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed and otherwise perished during the Second World War as a direct and indirect result of the harsh anti-Jewish policies of Germany and its allies'. But the concession that a relatively small number of Jews were killed was routinely used by Holocaust deniers to distract attention from the far more important fact of their refusal to admit that the figure ran into the millions, and that a large proportion of these victims were systematically murdered by gassing as well as by shooting.</ref>