Editing Holocaust denial (section)

==Examination of claims==
{{Main|Evidence and documentation for the Holocaust}}

The key claims which cause Holocaust denial to differ from established fact are:{{R|Key elements|Assertions}}

*The Nazis had no official policy or intention of exterminating Jews.
*The Nazis did not use [[gas chamber]]s to mass murder Jews.<ref name=NP-gas-chambers>{{cite web |title=Response to Holocaust denial on the existence of Gas Chambers and Crematoria |url=http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/american/skeptic-magazine/skeptic-12.html |work=[[Nizkor Project]] |access-date=November 16, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131120124932/http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/orgs/american/skeptic-magazine/skeptic-12.html |archive-date=November 20, 2013 |url-status=dead}}</ref>
*The figure of 5 to 6&nbsp;million Jewish deaths is a gross exaggeration, and the actual number is an [[order of magnitude]] lower.

Other claims include the following:
*Stories of the Holocaust were a myth initially created by the [[Allies of World War II]] to demonize Germans,{{R|Assertions}} Jews having spread this myth as part of a grander plot intended to enable the creation of a Jewish homeland in [[Palestine (region)|Palestine]], and now to garner continuing support for the state of Israel.<ref>A plot designed to garner support of Israel:
*"The central assertion for the deniers is that Jews are not victims but victimizers. They 'stole' billions in reparations, destroyed Germany's good name by spreading the 'myth' of the Holocaust, and won international sympathy because of what they claimed had been done to them. In the paramount miscarriage of injustice, they used the world's sympathy to 'displace' another people so that the state of Israel could be established. This contention relating to the establishment of Israel is a linchpin of their argument." [[Deborah Lipstadt]]. ''Denying the Holocaust&nbsp;– The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory'', [[Penguin Books]], 1993, p. 27. {{ISBN|0-452-27274-2}}.
*"Jews are thus depicted as manipulative and powerful conspirators who have fabricated myths of their own suffering for their own ends. According to the Holocaust deniers, by forging evidence and mounting a massive propaganda effort, the Jews have established their lies as 'truth' and reaped enormous rewards from doing so: for example, in making financial claims on Germany and acquiring international support for Israel." [http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm The nature of Holocaust denial: What is Holocaust denial?] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110718044959/http://www.jpr.org.uk/Reports/CS_Reports/no_3_2000/index.htm |date=July 18, 2011 }}, JPR report No. 3, 2000. Retrieved May 16, 2007.
*"Why, we might ask the deniers, if the Holocaust did not happen would any group concoct such a horrific story? Because, some deniers claim, there was a conspiracy by Zionists to exaggerate the plight of Jews during the war in order to finance the state of Israel through war reparations." Michael Shermer & Alex Grobman. ''Denying History: who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and why Do They Say It?'', [[University of California Press]], 2000, {{ISBN|0-520-23469-3}}, p. 106.
*"They [Holocaust deniers] picture a vast shadowy conspiracy that controls and manipulates the institutions of education, culture, the media and government in order to disseminate a pernicious mythology. The purpose of this Holocaust mythology, they assert, is the inculcation of a sense of guilt in the white, Western Christian world. Those who can make others feel guilty have power over them and can make them do their bidding. This power is used to advance an international Jewish agenda centered in the Zionist enterprise of the State of Israel." [http://www.adl.org/holocaust/theory.asp Introduction: Denial as Anti-Semitism] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110604020743/http://www.adl.org/holocaust/theory.asp |date=June 4, 2011 }}, "Holocaust Denial: An Online Guide to Exposing and Combating Anti-Semitic Propaganda", [[Anti-Defamation League]], 2001. Retrieved June 12, 2007.
*"The stress on Holocaust revisionism underscored the new anti-Semitic agenda gaining ground within the Klan movement. Holocaust denial refurbished conspiratorial anti-Semitism. Who else but the Jews had the media power to hoodwink unsuspecting masses with one of the greatest hoaxes in history? And for what motive? To promote the claims of the illegitimate state of Israel by making non-Jews feel guilty, of course." Lawrence N. Powell, ''Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana'', University of North Carolina Press, 2000, {{ISBN|0-8078-5374-7}}, p. 445.</ref>
*Documentary evidence of the Holocaust, from photographs to ''[[The Diary of a Young Girl|The Diary of Anne Frank]]'', is fabricated.{{R|Assertions}}
*Survivor testimonies are filled with errors and inconsistencies and are thus unreliable.{{R|Assertions}}
*Interrogators obtained Nazi prisoners' confessions of war crimes through the use of torture.{{R|Assertions}}
*The Nazi treatment of Jews was no different from what the [[Allies of World War II|Allies]] did to their enemies in World War II.<ref>Shermer & Grobman, 2002, pp. 103–14.</ref>

Holocaust denial is widely viewed as failing to adhere to [[Historical method|principles for the treatment of evidence]] that mainstream historians (as well as scholars in other fields) regard as basic to [[reason|rational inquiry]].<ref>"(H)istory is the attempt to describe events of the past and move from description to analysis, in accordance with certain agreed rules of evidence, of analysis of language, and of logic." "Yehuda Bauer, Historian of the Holocaust&nbsp;– Portrait of an Historian"&nbsp;– ''Online Dimensions, a Journal of Holocaust Studies'', Fall, 2004</ref>

The Holocaust was well documented by the [[bureaucracy]] of the Nazi government itself.<ref>"... the German bureaucrats' collective actions are relatively well-documented for the historian...." [[Christopher R. Browning]], ''The Path to Genocide: essays on launching the final solution'', Cambridge University Press, 1992, {{ISBN|0-521-55878-6}}, p. 125.</ref><ref>"According to the historian [[Raul Hilberg]], the United States alone captured forty thousand linear feet of documents on the murder of European Jews ... we can say that the Holocaust is a uniquely well-documented historical event." Deák, István. ''Essays on Hitler's Europe'', [[University of Nebraska Press]], 2001, {{ISBN|0-8032-1716-1}}, p. 67</ref> It was further witnessed by the [[Allies of World War II|Allied]] forces who entered Germany and its associated [[Axis Powers|Axis]] states towards the end of World War II.<ref>''Holocaust: The events and their impact on real people'', DK Publishing in conjunction with the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education, p. 146. "There our troops found sights, sounds, and stenches horrible beyond belief, cruelties so enormous as to be incomprehensible to the normal mind."</ref><ref>Kelly Oliver. ''Witnessing: beyond recognition'', [[University of Minnesota Press]], 2001, {{ISBN|0-8166-3627-3}}, p. 90.</ref><ref>Shelley Hornstein and Florence Jacobowitz. ''Image and remembrance: representation and the Holocaust'', 2003, Indiana University Press, {{ISBN|0-253-34188-4}}, pp. 205–206.</ref> It was also witnessed from the inside by non-Jewish captives such as Catholic [[French Resistance]] member [[André Rogerie]] who wrote extensively and testified about his experiences in seven camps including Auschwitz-Birkenau<ref name="ina-shoah">[http://grands-entretiens.ina.fr/video/Shoah INA, Major Interviews, General André Rogerie] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170629162948/http://grands-entretiens.ina.fr/video/Shoah |date=June 29, 2017 }}; audio recording</ref> and also produced the oldest contemporary sketch of a camp crematorium.<ref name=Wieviorka>Annette Wieviorka, ''Déportation et génocide. Entre la mémoire et l'oubli'', Plon, 1992, p. 249.</ref>

According to researchers [[Michael Shermer]] and [[Alex Grobman]], there is a "convergence of evidence" that proves that the Holocaust happened. This evidence includes:<ref>Shermer & Grobman, 2002, p. 33.</ref>

[[File:Jew demogr.png|thumb|Jewish World Population without Holocaust (mln people) by [[Sergio Della Pergola]]]]

{{blockquote|
#''Written documents''—hundreds of thousands of letters, memos, blueprints, orders, bills, speeches, articles, memoirs, and confessions.
#''Eyewitness testimony''—accounts from survivors, Jewish ''[[Sonderkommando]]s'' (who helped load bodies from the gas chambers into the crematoria in exchange for a chance of survival), [[Schutzstaffel|SS]] guards, commandants, local townspeople, and even high-ranking Nazis who spoke openly about the mass murder of the Jews.
#''Photographs''—including official military and press photographs, civilian photographs, secret photographs taken by survivors, aerial photographs, German and Allied film footage, and unofficial photographs taken by the German military.
#''The camps themselves''—concentration camps, work camps, and [[extermination camp]]s that still exist in varying degrees of originality and reconstruction.
#''Inferential evidence'' or ''[[argument from silence]]''—population demographics, reconstructed from the pre–World War II era; if six million Jews were not murdered, what happened to them?}}

Much of the controversy surrounding the claims of Holocaust deniers' centers on the methods used to present arguments that the Holocaust allegedly ''never happened as commonly accepted''. Numerous accounts have been given by Holocaust deniers (including evidence presented in court cases) of claimed facts and evidence; however, independent research has shown these claims to be based upon flawed research, biassed statements, or even deliberately falsified evidence. Opponents of Holocaust denial have documented numerous instances in which such evidence was altered or manufactured (see [[Nizkor Project]] and [[David Irving]]). According to [[Pierre Vidal-Naquet]], "in our society of image and spectacle, extermination on paper leads to extermination in reality."<ref>[[Pierre Vidal-Naquet]], French "une tentative d'extermination sur le papier qui relaie l'extermination réelle" in ''Les assassins de la mémoire'', ''Un Eichmann de papier'', Postface de [[Gisèle Sapiro]], Nouvelle édition revue et augmentée, La Découverte, Paris, 2005, {{ISBN|2-7071-4545-9}}.</ref>