Wesleyan University

SIX QUESTIONS ON (OR ABOUT) HOLOCAUST DENIAL

Author(s): BEREL LANG
Source: History and Theory, Vol. 49, No. 2 (May 2010), pp. 157-168
Published by: Wiley for Wesleyan University
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40864439
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History and Theory 49 (May 2010), 157-168 © Wesleyan University 2010 ISSN: 0018-2656

SIX QUESTIONS ON (OR ABOUT) HOLOCAUST DENIAL

BEREL LANG

ABSTRACT

Six questions are outlined and then responded to about Holocaust denial. These
(1) Holocaust denial's view of the Holocaust counterfactually- if it had occurred
presumed adequacy of the binary choice between Holocaust denial and affirmation
status and credence of their own assertions among denial advocates; (4) the often
historiographie uniqueness of Holocaust denial; (5) the contributions to Holocaus
of the denial position; (6) the measures- scholarly, legislative, practical- that h
or might be directed at the phenomenon of Holocaust denial.

Keywords: antisemitism, falsifiability, "Final Solution," hate laws, historiograph

caust denial

The very enormity of genocide nudges us toward incredulity, toward denial

and refusal.

Primo Levi, La Stampa, January 19, 1979

Everyone is free to interpret a phenomenon like the Hitlerian genocide ac-

cording to his philosophy. . . . Everyone is free, up to the limit, to imagine or
to dream that these monstrous facts did not take place. They unfortunately did
take place, and no one can deny their existence without outrage to the truth.
... It is impossible to have a debate on the existence of the gas chambers.
Statement signed by thirty-four French historians, Le Monde, February 21 , 1979

But of course there has been a debate, and the contours of Holocaust denial are
now as familiar as they are improbable. Its three principal claims assert, separate-
ly or in combination, that at the center of the (alleged) Holocaust, (a) the supposed
number of Jews murdered (the 6,000,000) is greatly exaggerated; (b) the primary
means associated with the death camps (gas chambers and crematoria) could not
have "handled" the number of victims claimed; and (c), most broadly, that what-
ever happened to the Jews through Nazi actions did not reflect genocidal intent or,
on some accounts, an overall design at all.1 Each of these contentions has been ex-

1. For several historical variations on these claims, see, for example, Richard Harwood, Did Six
Million Really Die? The Truth at Last (London: Historical Review Press, 1974); Arthur Butz, The
Hoax of the Twentieth Century (Newport Beach, CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1976); Paul
Rassinier, Debunking the Genocide Myth (Los Angeles: Noontide Press, 1978); Robert Faurisson,
Mémoire en defense contre ceux qui m'accusent de falsifier l'histoire (Paris: La Vieille Taube, 1980);
Fred Leuchter, The Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Chambers
at Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Majdanek, Poland (London: Focal Point, 1989); Bradley Smith, The

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158 BERELLANG

tensively disputed,2 and when th

credentials of the (even now) sma
reason for regarding denial claim
My discussion here "on or about"
position's historical implausibilitie
practical presuppositions as a his
niers' claims are so problematic as
torical landscape (by now as itself
of attention than it has typically
deep structure- its "thick" meani
locate the phenomenon in the fi
counterfacts, and questions ignor
moral presuppositions underlyin
sion would make for understandi
shaped historiographie critiques,
denial position because of that vie
implication and its marginal statu
Against this background, I call a
denial, together with my respons
have appeared previously, at least
the first two. Together, the six c
torical datum that is more provoc
blind moral insult denial is comm
Thus, to the questions:
1. Is it an implication of Holocau
Holocaust had occurred, denial ad
crime against humanity?
2. Is Holocaust denial's position ad
between "denial," on the one han
the other?

Holocaust Controversy: The Case for Op

Open Debate on the Holocaust, 1992); Dav
War II Books, 2002).
A number of these accounts conflate t
political or cultural or religious purposes
tion between these is, however, importa
acknowledgment of the occurrence of t
of exploitation has in any event been mad
cal occurrence of the Holocaust itself (se
Life [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999], a
Holocaust Industry (London: Verso, 2003
Holocaust, whether demonstrated or not,
claims, although this hasn't prevented the
2. See, for summaries of these argument
Assault on Truth and Memory (New Y
History, Holocaust, and the David Irvin
and Alex Grobman, Denying History: W
Say It? (Berkeley: University of Californ

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 SIX QUESTIONS ON (OR ABOUT) HOLOCAUST DENIAL 159

3. Are the advocates of Holocaust denial lying? That is, do they think that wh
they say is false but affirm it nonetheless? Or: do they genuinely believe th
own claims, applying to them the same standards they do in their own other, m
conventional historical findings?
4. Is Holocaust denial, like the term sometimes used for the Holocaust itsel
unique? That is, historically unmatched, subsequently or in precedent?
5 . Has the development of Holocaust denial in its expression led to recogni
able scholarly or historiographie advances or benefits? If so or not, how does t
reflect on the denial position itself?
6. What, after all else has been said about- against or for- Holocaust denial,
is to be done about it?

And then in response:

1 . Together or separately, the substantive assertions of Holocaust denial (again,
singly or in combination: the exaggerated number of victims, the technical in-
capacity of the "death camps" to do what they are alleged to have done, the ab-
sence of genocidal or any overall Nazi design against the Jews) may not entail
that if what these claims deny had occurred, the Holocaust would have been a
crime or wrong, but the position strongly suggests this. The emotive charge in
the various denial assertions and the intensity of their rejection of "evidence" of
the Holocaust's occurrence are difficult to understand except on the grounds that
their subject was assumed to have human and moral significance beyond that only
of the historical fact. Admittedly, the intensity of denial expressions might reflect
only a strong commitment to historical accuracy- the will to right a historio-
graphie wrong. But the context in which denial claims typically appear makes this
improbable, certainly as an exclusive motive; the nature of the Holocaust itself
and the charged rhetorical formulations about it have become part of the issues
surrounding it.
What difference would it make if the counterfactual assertion proposed were
acknowledged- spoken- by the school of Holocaust denial? (Again: the counter-
factual does not judge that the Holocaust did occur- only that if it had occurred,
it would have been wrong.) One consequence of "outing" this premise would be
to underscore the distinction between, on the one hand, the deniers who claim
that nothing in the way of a "Final Solution" was plotted or implemented but
recognize that it would have been wrong had it been- and, on the other hand, the
less commonly expressed but arguably more widespread opinion that recognizes
the "Final Solution" as historical fact and would even now justify it- whether as
a good in itself or as legitimate self-defense or warranted collateral damage. The
comparative moral standing of these two groups is debatable, and undoubtedly
their memberships overlap (even if contradictory); but the conceptual and histori-
cal differences between them are evident and should be addressed.

Furthermore, recognition by denial advocates of the Holocaust's wrongness (if

it occurred) would mark a first point of agreement between them and their crit-
ics, with that point a potential bridge for subsequent discussion. Deniers could
hardly take the position of rejecting the possibility of the Holocaust's occurrence
by committing themselves to their position no matter what counter-evidence was
presented. The concession that if the Holocaust had occurred, it would have been

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 160 BERELLANG

wrong would thus mark initial a

as soon as it begins.
2. Is there an alternative to the
locaust denial and Holocaust "re
the mid-space between those tw
sions noted even within the ext
denial"- even many of the vict
was in motion). But no systema
mediate or middle groups, alth
sider how large a body of opin
argues in contrast to a binary
located between denial and ackn
Recognition of one large grou
world population is estimated a
many of this six billion have ev
answer would be that it was no
heard of it. Even if the percenta
than its opposite, the latter fig
admittedly difficult to know h
poll I attempted on the matter
is, of between three and four a
Holocaust.) Whatever the numbe
group ought to be taken into ac
as absent, unknowing. Member
turned their backs: they simply
tion to be informed and to reac
seniors in one state of the U.S. found that 50% of those students did not know
what the Holocaust was, when it occurred, or who, in its course, did what to
whom.)3
Then, too, still other groups appear here between the endpoints of denial and
acknowledgment. A second such group includes people to some extent cognizant
of the Holocaust but for whom its occurrence does not matter (as warranting a re-
action) for a variety of reasons: because of personal or group hardship that has left
no room for empathy with others' suffering; or because the present distance from
the Holocaust of almost seventy years blends into a view of the historical past so
filled with war and atrocity that even another large instance adds nothing to their
understanding or reaction; or, still more knowingly, as they juxtapose the Holo-
caust to other incidents of genocide in ways that minimize the Holocaust's claims
even as a member of the group or that characterize the Holocaust as an imitation
of or a defensive reaction to other similar threats. Especially in the latter two non-
reactions, the "fog of war" turns into a "fog of history": not denial, not absence
or ignorance but indifference- a sense that in the place from which they observe
themselves and the world, the Holocaust might as well not have occurred.

3. See Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, 216.

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 SIX QUESTIONS ON (OR ABOUT) HOLOCAUST DENIAL 1 6 1

What consequences follow if we do find Holocaust denial to be not one opti

in a binary choice but at one end of a spectrum with intermediate points betw
that and its other end? The consequences are notable because of the large, con
stantly increasing number of people in the middle space who may at some ti
move toward one or the other of the poles. (An instance of this has appeared r
cently in certain Muslim countries where a populist turn to Holocaust denial h
occurred, nearly always based on second- or third-hand sources and grounded
more basic themes of anti-Zionism or antisemitism- but here as elsewhere, the
motives seem the least of it).4 Or because minimizing the effects of the Holoca
may over time become less apparent, effacing also the fact of the absence. Ind
ference itself typically has an object (indifference to a particular matter); the p
sibility emerges here of absence beyond indifference- expressing itself in so
ways like denial, but differing from it nonetheless.
3. To ask if advocates of Holocaust denial believe their own claims is not as

mischievously ad hominem as the question might seem, nor does it preclude test-
ing the deniers' claims in empirically historical terms. Its potential significance,
in fact, is much like the analogous question that was directed to the description of
the Jews by Nazi racial "science" as a "cancer" or "bacillus"- thus, as a literally
biological threat. Some Nazi adherents clearly believed these claims, and on that
ground, the "Final Solution" could be (and was) rationalized as self-defense. But
many Nazis, including important ones in the hierarchy, as well as many non-Party
Germans, are known to have been skeptical, at most paying the "threat" lip-ser-
vice. Similar differences and even contradictions appear among the advocates of
Holocaust denial (one must include among the factors here the economic benefits
that came with this advocacy for some of them). Such ad hominem criticism is
not by itself disproof of denial's historical claims, but neither is it irrelevant to
their assessment.

And then, too: Holocaust deniers' motives matter most immediately insofar as
we view differently people who act on what they believe to be true (even if mis-
takenly) from those who act (perhaps in the same way) on what they recognize
as false but nonetheless profess to be true: a difference, in other words, between
Holocaust deniers "in good faith" (odd as that sounds) and those who lie their
way to the same conclusions. The question of "Why Holocaust denial at allT is
undoubtedly relevant to both sides of this distinction, although arguably a bottom-
less question through its fate in "explanations" of denial as a refurbished formula
for much older antisemitism. The latter reductionist and question-begging claim
only defers an already complicated issue to the still broader one of "Why anti-
semitismi"

4. Is Holocaust denial unique in the chronicles of either pure or applied histo-

riography? As soon as the question is put, the answer is obvious: "No, certainly
not. Not unique, not unprecedented, arguably not even the most flagrant among
examples of atrocity denial." Another egregious instance of denial emerged from
the Holocaust era itself, albeit on the other side of the world and the War- in the
svstemic Japanese atrocities committed in China, including but extending beyond

4. For versions of denial in its contemporary Muslim context, see Meir Litvak and Ester Webman,
From Empathy to Denial (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).

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162 BERELLANG

the "Rape of Nanking." In one r

about those atrocities has been
former has had the concurrence
fect, denial with official sanction
government's continuing refusa
1917. These two notable instanc
or recent, that employ virtually
numbers of victims, tu quoques,
subversion, arguments from sel
fogs of war. (In the last of these,
for genocide itself serves also, r
The "genre" of denial that surf
among its instances, but it does
tween atrocity and its historical
War II political rhetoric by the
verifiability that goes a step bey
falsifiable. A paradigm of non-f
"I have no memory of such-and-
sion and scope of historical den
denial to sort through the tissue
well emerge here not as an occas
category- perhaps heralding a G
5. Has any good or benefit eme
understanding the Holocaust or
be distinguished from the clich
finds a silver lining in every clo
because historical explanations h
judge what would have happene
sus now on dates, facts, and nu
probably not differ radically if
curred-but the impetus for cert
indeed come at least partly in re
the gas chambers in the death ca
of victims claimed (something t
been subjected to systematic tes
too, the cumulative evidence of
when the absence of an order si
denial formulations as itself suf
the gas chambers of Auschwitz
nial? Of course. Would it have b
is no reason to doubt or deny th
supporting the denial position, t
further undermined its claims:
of "historiographie justice."

5. For a valuable summary of these i

Evidence from the Irving Trial (Bloomi

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 SIX QUESTIONS ON (OR ABOUT) HOLOCAUST DENIAL 163

6. What, now and after all, can be done about Holocaust denial and the us
which it has been or may yet be put? This familiar question propels the past
the present where practical judgment can no longer find refuge in only spec
tive possibilities. What, specifically, is to be done? Admittedly, the uses to w
denial has been put have in some cases reflected independent origins and li
antisemitism and anti-Zionism did not wait for the Holocaust to find their motiva-

tion or rationale- nor did German or other expressions of nationalism that have at
times also deployed versions of denial for support. But these convergent sources
only underscore the importance of facing the phenomenon of denial in its most
prominent current role.
Two examples seem representative and indicative of the difficulties in con-
sidering, "What is to be done?" At Northwestern University in 1989, in the first
of what then became the biannual "Lessons and Legacies" conferences on the
Holocaust, Saul Friedländer delivered a plenary address to an audience that in-
cluded conference participants, university faculty and students, and the public.
Following his lecture, Friedländer responded to questions from the audience- un-
til one question was asked to which he began to respond but then stopped. In that
moment, Peter Hayes of Northwestern, the session chair, whispered something
to Friedländer, who interrupted his response with words to this effect: "Profes-
sor Butz, because of what you have written about the matters we are discussing,
I decline to respond to your question." The person who had asked the question
retreated with only a slight rustle of protest. He was Arthur Butz, professor of
engineering at Northwestern and author of The Hoax of the Twentieth Century.6
And here a question arises that persists twenty years later. Friedländer 's lecture,
although part of the Conference program, was open to the public and was pre-
sented in a university building; the person asking the question was a university
faculty member; not all the audience were affiliated with the university, but there
was a common understanding that anyone in the audience could participate in the
discussion after the lecture. In these terms, Friedländer's refusal to respond to
Butz's question becomes itself open to discussion.7
A second formulation raises this specific occurrence to a more general level.
Deborah Lipstadt, who in Denying the Holocaust brought the denial issue sys-
tematically to public attention (and who would later be the victorious defendant
in the David Irving trial in Great Britain after he sued her for libel in charging
him with denial), had stated earlier that she would not appear on the same plat-
form (lecture, panel, television, or radio) with denial advocates. To do so, she
held, would represent their position as a respectable or at least debatable historical
view- a claim she rejected. So far as I know, Lipstadt has not argued that deniers
should be banned from speaking on university campuses or elsewhere, and she
has explicitly opposed legislative measures criminalizing or otherwise penalizing

6. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century.

7. In personal correspondence, Friedländer recalls (with what he estimates to be only 20% prob-
able accuracy) that Butz asked whether Friedländer (presumably as a historian who was Jewish) could
have the objectivity necessary for making historical claims about the Holocaust. That issue had been
raised previously, to be sure, in versions of denial; so far as I am aware, its relation to the general
question of historical objectivity or to the epistemic status of historical statements as such has not
been part of the deniers' critique.

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164 BERELLANG

expressions of Holocaust denial (

the course of her writing and spe
Lipstadt provides detailed and fu
(Friedländer does not in his writ
his work on the history of the
not aware of any policy statemen
Here, in any event, the question
more complex. For Lipstadt 's reb
assertions of denial and the "evi
from confronting their authors in
in the prospect of directly confr
tation of their position, fuller in
this is aside, to be sure, from her
of law.) And in fact, writing inv
address that spoken or live ones
plied listener" irrespective of wh
or not; always there is the effort
clusions-and the relation among
comes into clearer view: what for
nial adopt? If face-to-face encoun
to rule Butz's question out of ord
general level. Or should response
practice has, of course, been com
broader analyses that counter den
purpose or not.
Should legislative measures, crim
tion or punishment? (Such legisl
anyone in the jurisdiction should
unless someone deliberately chos
sequence of this possibility is tha
substantial. Minimally, it faces th
articulation of what is proscribed
than would otherwise be the case
juridical, and practical measures r
and unavoidable. And beyond the
principle: the implications of su
and the role the legislation ascrib
a specific historical finding. (Cou
facts- but rarely with the "fact
never in imposing penalties for
too, finally, there are the conseq
the denial view itself: Would such
sions of denial? What practical in
history of censorship has produc
in relation to the status or circul

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 SIX QUESTIONS ON (OR ABOUT) HOLOCAUST DENIAL 165

For better or worse, the legislative option has been adopted by fourteen c
tries that now have laws proscribing Holocaust denial, whether by prohib
"genocide denial" or specifically naming the Holocaust as "undeniable"
broader laws that ban group hate-speech or libel that includes Holocaust d
Countries as politically and culturally different as Canada and Israel, Aust
and Germany, Sweden and France, Switzerland and New Zealand have
ed versions of these laws; several of these countries have initiated prosecu
based on them. But the two principal questions crucial for judging the legis
persist: first, what are its consequences? Does it indeed deter? Is its evident
bolic function (in addition to its practical side) effective? And then, second
are the costs of implementing such measures, material but also symbolic
principle?
The first of these questions remains unanswered and perhaps unanswerable-
an aspect that suggests that deterrence is probably not the legislation's primary
concern. (The deterrent effect of other "standard" punishments, including capital
punishment, also remains in dispute- perhaps pointing to the same conclusion.)
A good deal, however, is known about the costs of the legislation. The material
costs, in court action and enforcement, are formidable if the laws are applied con-
sistently. The related symbolic effect seems bound to cut both ways- on one hand
stigmatizing the views against which the laws are directed, but on the other hand
imposing another, conceptually vague limit on free expression (to say nothing
about the lure that certain types of prohibition themselves convey). Enforcement
itself poses problems, as became only too evident in the guilty verdict of a French
court against the historian Bernard Lewis for his "denial" of genocide in the Turk-
ish attacks on the Armenian populace in 1915-1917. The symbolic fine of one
franc imposed on Lewis, added to the judge's equivocal rationale for the verdict,
arguably diminished what weight the trial might otherwise have had.8 And then,
too, bridging these two sets of issues is one that combines epistemic and legal ele-
ments: namely the assumption that a court of law is in a position to determine the
"correct" narrative of a complex historical event.9
Few of even the most outspoken defenders of freedom of speech argue for no
limits to that freedom. Libel or slander, the incitement to riot, and even the more
marginal case of "fighting words" have been accepted as reasonable if still con-
testable limitations. To extend these exceptional categories to include statements
about particular historical events charged not with being just false accounts of
them (on that charge, the number of trials prosecuted would be endless), but as
false and offensive to a group sensibility or dignity clearly strains those boundar-
ies further. To shout "Fire" (knowing there is none) in a crowded theater, on Jus-
tice Holmes 's example, is life-threatening. But there seems more than only a gap
between that act and the "offense" or "insult" or "trivialization" that the clearly

8. The verdict on Lewis, for his statement in an article in Le Monde, was rendered on June 21,
1995; see, on the historical and conceptual issues involved in this, Yair Auron, The Banality of Denial:
Israel and the Armenian Genocide (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 2003), and Lewis's
interview with Dalia Karpel, "There Was No Genocide," Haaretz Weekly (January 23, 1998).
9. For a systematic analysis of the legal issues involved in legislation related to Holocaust denial,
see Robert A. Kahn, Holocaust Denial and the Law (New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004).

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 166 BERELLANG

offensive, insulting, and trivial

of denial involve. Few people m
meaning or offensive words or
casions is a separate issue). But i
turn the expanse of such potent
The decisive question here is ho
claims of Holocaust denial come and what can and should be done about them.

The possibilities considered so far may not seem to advance the latter question-
in the first two responses (live or written critique), by proposing too little, in the
third (imposing civil or criminal sanctions), by proposing too much. A fourth op-
tion, of simply ignoring the claims of Holocaust denial, has its attractions and not
only because it would be easiest. It is possible that in the long run Holocaust de-
nial may fall of its own weight, urged on by only a small, isolated group no more
credible than the "Flat World Society."11 Certainly, compared to other historical
questions related to the Holocaust still requiring research and analysis- including
the still basic question of what causal factors set the "Final Solution" in motion-
even the political and moral issues raised by Holocaust denial seem less urgent. A
pointed example of this contrast has appeared recently in the version of "denial"
asserted by Iran's President Ahmadinejad. Because of his office and Iran's politi-
cal and economic importance, Ahmadinejad' s statements have been prominently
reported, although they do not draw on even the slim arguments that the denial
position has assembled. Apart from this, moreover, the effects of Ahmadinejad' s
pronouncements have been at best equivocal: his contradiction of scholarly opin-
ion has been noted inside as well as outside Iran, as have also the negative practi-
cal consequences of his advocacy for Iran on the world scene.
Notwithstanding the furor that denial typically arouses, it seems possible that
"What is to be done about Holocaust denial?" may not call for a general solution
at all, so much as a nest of individual reactions linked together by a common sense
of fact and moral grasp. Indeed, a similar arrangement seems to have figured in
the response of some non-Germans who, almost seventy years after the Holocaust
and despite Germany's efforts at acknowledgment and "Wiedergutmachung," still
refuse to visit the country or to buy its products. This does not amount to a call for
a general boycott, but a form of individual expression, largely symbolic, and also
itself evolving (in many cases, diminishing). Analogously, the choice between
responding to Holocaust denial through writing or scholarship or by live address
is arguably also a matter for personal, "local" judgment rather than for general
rule. To be sure, criminal and civil legislation are obviously more than only per-
sonal expressions, but the objections to them cited above seem to me clearly to
outweigh whatever benefits they might bring.

10. In the United States the most heated current controversy about the relation between free speech
and Holocaust denial has been triggered by Facebook's decision to allow Holocaust deniers, individu-
ally or in groups, to publish their views on the website.
11. lhere has been pushback even in Iran to Ahmadinejad s rulminations, mainly stressing the
political damage they have caused Iran internationally. A subtle rebuttal came from an Israeli Arab
member of the Knesseth who argued that of course the Arabs should recognize (and condemn) the
Holocaust- since after all, his contention went, the Arabs were its "second victims."

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 SIX QUESTIONS ON (OR ABOUT) HOLOCAUST DENIAL 1 67

It might be objected that all the alternatives mentioned focus exclusively

public discourse or rhetoric and to that extent ignore the potential role of
programs or policies that might counter Holocaust denial more effectively, as
example, in educational systems and curricula. But public discourse is where
tiatives for public or civic action originate, and here again one can only rep
the obvious: that a minimal condition for confronting Holocaust denial is thr
the light of evidence and argument, including with that a search for its roots
provenance. To trace these, with the conclusions drawn then serving as a ba
for broader theoretical and imaginative representations, is precisely the work
Holocaust historians have undertaken and that remains the key element in a
discussion of Holocaust denial.

There may continue to be principled disagreement on whether, if it were pos-

sible to silence expressions of Holocaust denial, that should be done. But however
one judges Mill's claim in On Liberty that false positions have the value of test-
ing and so of strengthening the status of whatever we take to be true- thus, that
positions judged false should be voiced even if they could be silenced- this is
obviously not an option for Holocaust denial. Given this view's public presence,
moreover, it is the more evident that confidence in assessing it depends on its
claims being confronted fully and directly- a line of argument that indeed echoes
the Mill-like premise that censorship is at least as likely to achieve the opposite of
its goals as those it is intended to realize.
Even with this restraint, however, there remains room for exceptions, in recog-
nizing that Holocaust denial has a larger presence in certain cultural contexts than
others. But to grant a special historical or moral relation to the Holocaust and so
also to Holocaust denial of public discourse in Germany or Israel, for example,
still leaves a range of options even there. Any legislative measures adopted, for
example, might have a "sunset" clause attached- as it must be clear that for any
such legislation, time is likely to erode current urgencies. Legislation is always set
in the context of history and its contingencies - and so, too, it should be clear, for
any legislative response undertaken in response to Holocaust denial.

A concluding comment has unfortunately to be included here about abuses of the

charge of Holocaust denial, as these too have appeared in the aftermath of that
position's public face and the responses to it. Just as the Holocaust itself has been
abused in political, artistic, and even historical discourse- as in the metaphori-
cal applications of "Nazi" or "Auschwitz" or "genocide" or "kapo" to persons
or settings radically different from their originals - so the charge of Holocaust
denial has also come to be used as a generic term or metaphor for avoidance or
silence about the Holocaust itself or even about other and more limited events.

When a department head at a national Holocaust museum charges the director of

a German archive with Holocaust denial for refusing to release certain data, one
sees a gesture in this direction (however warranted the request for the data's re-
lease was). Similarly, when "post-Zionist" Israeli historians are labeled Holocaust
deniers because of their criticism of the standard narrative of Israeli history that
places an idealized Zionism at the center of that narrative, one sees again the ease

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168 BERELLANG

of metaphorical slippage.12 Much

or emotive fillers- metonymies fo
charge of Holocaust denial comes
term appearing then as a metony
sort. Since like Holocaust denial i
necessary response must fall ba
overstate, skew, and, finally, dim
Holocaust denial is not only a mat
practical force through words. An
what is permissible to say about t
that might be accomplished, this
of other words, to undo and then

Wesleyan University

12. See, for an example of this, Elchan

Am Oved, 2006).

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