Editing Holocaust denial (section)

===Efforts to preserve the historical record===

====During the war====
One of the earliest efforts to save historical record of the Holocaust occurred during the war in France, where [[Drancy internment camp]] records were carefully preserved and turned over to the new [[National Office for Veterans and Victims of War]]. However, the bureau then held them in secret, refusing to release copies later, including to the [[Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation]] (CDJC).{{Citation needed|date=June 2020}}<!-- {{R|klars-coth}} -->

In 1943, [[Isaac Schneersohn]], anticipating the need for a center to document and preserve the memory of the persecution for historical reasons and also support claims post-war, gathered together 40 representatives from Jewish organizations in [[Grenoble]] which was under Italian occupation at the time<ref name="mdlShoah">{{cite web |url=http://www.memorialdelashoah.org/index.php/en/archives-and-documentation/the-cdjc-catalogue/the-history-of-the-center-of-contemporary-jewish-documentation-cdjc |title=The History of the Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation (CDJC) |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150316150400/http://www.memorialdelashoah.org/index.php/en/archives-and-documentation/the-cdjc-catalogue/the-history-of-the-center-of-contemporary-jewish-documentation-cdjc |archive-date=March 16, 2015}}</ref> in order to form a ''center de documentation''.<ref name="Jockusch">{{cite web |url={{google books|id=E2IhaiQwJQ8C|page=18|title=Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe|plainurl=yes}} |title=Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe |last1=Jockusch |first1=Laura |date=October 11, 2012 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=9780199764556 |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199764556.001.0001}} as quoted in {{cite journal |url=https://www.academia.edu/1777831 |title=Khurbn Forshung (''destruction research'')– Jewish Historical Commissions in Europe, 1943–1949 |last1=Jockusch |first1=Laura |website=academia.edu |access-date=March 15, 2015 |archive-date=June 26, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200626051235/https://www.academia.edu/1777831/_Khurbn_Forshung_Jewish_Historical_Commissions_in_Europe_1943-1949_ |url-status=live}}</ref> Exposure meant the death penalty, and as a result little actually happened before [[Liberation of France|liberation]].<ref name="ej-cdjc">{{Citation |last1=Mazor |first1=Michel |last2=Weinberg |first2=David |contribution=Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaine (CDJC) |editor1-last=Berenbaum |editor1-first=Michael |editor2-last=Skolnik |editor2-first=Fred |title=Encyclopedia Judaica |volume=4 |edition=2 |pages=547 |series=Gale Virtual Reference Library |publisher=[[Macmillan Reference USA]] |place=Detroit |date=2007 |contribution-url=http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX2587504110&v=2.1&u=imcpl1111&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=00b7d473b9c8670353939c8535501ac3 |access-date=April 3, 2015 |archive-date=June 29, 2018 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180629074246/http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CCX2587504110&v=2.1&u=imcpl1111&it=r&p=GVRL&sw=w&asid=00b7d473b9c8670353939c8535501ac3 |url-status=live}}</ref> Serious work began after the center moved to Paris in late 1944 and was renamed the CDJC.{{R|Jockusch|ej-cdjc}}

====Immediate post-war period====
[[File:Ohrdruf Corpses Eisenhower.jpg|thumb|April 12, 1945: Generals [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]], [[Omar Bradley]] and [[George S. Patton]] inspect an improvised crematory pyre at [[Ohrdruf concentration camp]].]]
In 1945, General [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]], Supreme Allied Commander, anticipated that someday an attempt would be made to recharacterize the documentation of Nazi crimes as propaganda and took steps against it.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Hobbs|first1=Joseph Patrick|last2=Eisenhower|first2=Dwight D.|last3=Marshall|first3=George Catlett|title=Dear General: Eisenhower's Wartime Letters to Marshall|date=May 12, 1999|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|location=Baltimore|isbn=0801862191}}</ref> Eisenhower, upon finding the victims of Nazi concentration camps, ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and made to bury the dead.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Hobbs |first1=Joseph Patrick |last2=Eisenhower |first2=Dwight D. |last3=Marshall |first3=George Catlett |title=Dear General: Eisenhower's Wartime Letters to Marshall |date=May 12, 1999 |publisher=[[Johns Hopkins University Press]] |location=Baltimore |isbn=0801862191|page=223}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=World War II Liberation Photography |url=https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/about/photo-archives/world-war-ii-liberation-photography |access-date=August 30, 2020 |website=[[United States Holocaust Memorial Museum]] |language=en |archive-date=September 22, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200922024859/https://www.ushmm.org/collections/the-museums-collections/about/photo-archives/world-war-ii-liberation-photography |url-status=live}}</ref>

====Nuremberg trials====
[[File:Evidence in Nuremberg trials.jpg|thumb|United States Army clerks with evidence collected for the Nuremberg trials]]
The [[Nuremberg trials]] took place in Germany after the war in 1945–1946. The stated aim was to dispense justice in retribution for atrocities of the German government. This Allied intention to administer justice post-war was first announced in 1943 in the [[Moscow Declaration|Declaration on German Atrocities in Occupied Europe]] and reiterated at the [[Yalta Conference]] and at Berlin in 1945.<ref name="Wright-1946">{{cite journal |last=Wright |first=Quincy |author-link= Quincy Wright |year=1946 |title=The Nuremberg Trial |journal=[[Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science]] |volume=246 |issue=1 |pages=72–80 |jstor=1025134 |doi=10.1177/000271624624600113 |s2cid=143138559 |issn=0002-7162}}</ref> While the intention was not specifically to preserve the historical record of the Holocaust, some of the core documents required to prosecute the cases were provided to them by the [[CDJC]], and much of the huge trove of archives were then transferred to the CDJC after the trials and became the core of future Holocaust historiography.<ref name="Bensoussan">{{cite book |url={{google books|id=aNzjTUT6jdYC|title=Holocaust Historiography in Context: Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements|plainurl=yes|page=245}} |title=Holocaust Historiography in Context: Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements |editor1-first=David |editor1-last=Bankier |editor2-first=Dan |editor2-last=Mikhman <!--|chapter=Jewish Contemporary Documentation Centre (CDJC) and Holocaust Research in France, 1945-1970--> |last1=Bensoussan |first1=Georges |date=2008 |publisher=[[Berghahn Books]] |pages=245–254 |isbn=9789653083264 |access-date=March 15, 2015}}</ref>

The Nuremberg trials were important historically, but the events were still very recent, television was in its infancy and not present, and there was little public impact. There were isolated moments of limited public awareness from Hollywood films such as ''[[The Diary of Anne Frank]]'' (1959) or the 1961 ''[[Judgment at Nuremberg]]'' which had some newsreel footage of actual scenes from liberated Nazi concentration camps including scenes of piles of naked corpses laid out in rows and bulldozed into large pits, which was considered exceptionally graphic for the time.

Public awareness changed when the Eichmann trial riveted the world's attention fifteen years after Nuremberg.<ref name="yadvashem-impact">{{cite web |url=http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/eichmann/awareness_of_the_holocaust.asp |title=Shaping an Awareness of the Holocaust in Israeli and World Public Opinion |date=2015 |website=[[Yad Vashem]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141023150544/http://www.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/eichmann/awareness_of_the_holocaust.asp |archive-date=October 23, 2014 |access-date=June 26, 2015 |quote=In the annals of public awareness of the Holocaust period, nothing rivals the Eichmann trial as a milestone and turning point, whose impact is evident to this day. The trial introduced the Holocaust into the historical, educational, legal and cultural discourse, not merely in Israel and the Jewish world, but on the consciousness of all peoples of the world. Sixteen years after the end of the Holocaust, it focused attention upon the account of the suffering and torment of the Jewish people, as recounted to the judges. Its powerful, and one could claim, revolutionary, consequences continue right up to the present day.}}</ref><ref name="Shandler-1999a">{{cite book |last=Shandler |first=Jeffrey |title=While America Watches : Televising the Holocaust |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NobvLCXFIOcC&pg=PA127 |access-date=June 26, 2015 |date=February 4, 1999 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]], USA |location=New York |isbn=978-0-19-518258-3 |page=127 |chapter=4. The Man in the Glass Box |quote=The Eichmann case is widely cited as a[sic] marking a threshold in American awareness of the Holocaust, generating a 'renewed engagement' and 'heightened historical consciousness' as well as serving as a catalyst for a spate of American Holocaust literature, television programs, and feature films.}}</ref>

====Trial of Adolf Eichmann====
{{main|Eichmann trial}}
In 1961, the [[Cabinet of Israel|Israeli government]] captured [[Adolf Eichmann]] in Argentina and brought him to [[Israel]] to stand trial for war crimes. Chief prosecutor [[Gideon Hausner]]'s intentions were not only to demonstrate Eichmann's guilt personally but to present material about the entire Holocaust, thus producing a comprehensive record.<ref name="Cesarani-2005">{{cite book |last=Cesarani |first=David |author-link=David Cesarani |title=Eichmann: His Life and Crimes |publisher=[[Vintage Books|Vintage]] |location=London |year=2005 |orig-year=2004 |isbn=978-0-09-944844-0 |pages=252, 254–5, 325–7}}</ref>

The Israeli government arranged for the trial to have prominent media coverage.<ref name=Birn-2011>{{cite journal |last=Birn |first=Ruth Bettina |title=Fifty Years After: A Critical Look at the Eichmann Trial |journal=Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law |year=2011 |volume=44 |pages=443–473 |url=http://law.case.edu/journals/JIL/Documents/(21)%20Birn_Darby.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131203021540/http://law.case.edu/journals/JIL/Documents/%2821%29%20Birn_Darby.pdf |archive-date=December 3, 2013 |access-date=April 2, 2015 |url-status=dead}}</ref> Many major newspapers from all over the globe sent reporters and published front-page coverage of the story.{{R|Cesarani-2005}} Israelis had the opportunity to watch live television broadcasts of the proceedings, and videotape was flown daily to the United States for broadcast the following day.{{R|Cesarani-2005}}<ref name=Shandler-1999b>{{cite book |last=Shandler |first=Jeffrey |title=While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust |year=1999 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |location=Oxford; New York |isbn=0-19-511935-5 |page=[https://archive.org/details/whileamericawatc00shan_0/page/93 93] |quote=The trial and the surrounding media coverage sparked renewed interest in wartime events, and the resulting increase in publication of memoirs and scholarly works helped raise public awareness of the Holocaust. |url=https://archive.org/details/whileamericawatc00shan_0/page/93}}</ref>