Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard

From the earliest days of their movement, Holocaust deniers have largely centred their arguments on the Auschwitz death camp. Surveying the literature which makes up so-called Holocaust Revisionism,  the obsession with Auschwitz is undoubtedly one of its defining features. Since the early 1990s, with the advent of the modern world-wide web, Holocaust deniers have taken to the internet to try and argue their case. Until recently, the ensuing online debates between advocates of Holocaust denial and their critics have likewise focused on Auschwitz.


My friends at the Holocaust Controversies Blog have written an article that focuses on the Operation Reinhard camps, Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor, and the attempts to deny the reality of the murder at those camps by Holocaust deniers, Carlo Mattogno, Jürgen Graf, and Thomas Kues. They dedicated this work to the memory of Harry W. Mazal OBE.


The work is entitled, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, Holocaust Denial and Operation Reinhard: A Critique of the Falsehoods of, Mattogno, Graf, and Kues. 

The Holocaust History Project: Pamphlet on David Irving

The Holocaust History Project Blog of The Holocaust History Project has announced an updated pamphlet on Holocaust denier David Irving.

The British court found that Irving's

misrepresentation of history was

"deliberate in the sense that he was motivated by a

desire borne of his own ideological beliefs to

present Hitler in a favourable light."

OPINION: Don't Call Climate Doubters Deniers

I am friendly with  and love people who doubt the reality of climate change.  The same cannot be said for those who "doubt" the reality of the Final Solution.  Lately it has become commonplace to refer to the former as "deniers," but the implicit connection to the latter offends me.  To understand why, I think it is useful to look at these groups of people.

The Chemistry of Holocaust Denial

This post is an opportunity to collect in one place some of the articles I've written on Holocaust Denial. I have not been actively involved with this topic in years. The deniers may have additional pseudo-arguments of which I am not aware, but I think as a whole the articles stand.

In 2001, I wrote an Expert Report to support the defense of Deborah Lipstadt and Penguin Books against the libel accusations of David Irving.

David Irving had sued Deborah Lipstadt in the UK for libel because of the fact that she identified him as a Holocaust denier, Hitler apologist, distorter of history, antisemite and racist in her book Denying the Holocaust. It should be noted that Lipstadt did not choose the legal system as the place to fight this battle. By suing her for libel, Irving threatened her right of free speech as well as the accuracy of the historical record. As a US citizen, Lipstadt could have conveniently ignored the suit and relied on the protections of the US First Amendment. Instead, she courageously rose to the challenge, deciding that UK legal precedent is of historical importance. She defended herself using the defense of justification. Her book was not libel because it was true. She won the suit, Mr. Justice Gray found that the defense of justification was in fact a valid one.

Irving appealed the decision and Lipstadt won again.