Terence Kuch

Thinking of the case of Bishop Richard Williamson, and others: Why is there Holocaust denial?

Columnist Richard Cohen (Washington Post, 10 February 2009, page A17) holds that deniers claim that the Holocaust is “a yarn, a myth concocted by those diabolically clever Jews to win sympathy, reparations and, of course, Israel itself.”

But that seems an unlikely motive. If the deniers are truly anti-Jewish or anti-Semitic, or if they think Hitler acted rightly, these deniers should affirm the Holocaust, praise it, even exaggerate the number of deaths.

The Holocaust certainly did occur, pretty much as commonly believed. And the deniers, I am sure, know that. Denial therefore isn’t really a claim of historical fact, but a statement of ideology, a refusal to “let Nazis be Nazis.” But the form of their denial seems to me both irrational and, as a strategy, self-defeating.

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