Satirical publication The Onion released a video on Thursday in which fictional Holocaust deniers were asked why they do not believe the Holocaust happened.
“If you examine the evidence,” one character wrote, “it’s very obvious that the vast meticulous records the Nazis kept of their genocidal activities over the course of 12 years were produced under duress.”
Another said: “The Holocaust Museum is a political instrument engineered by eighth grade teachers to get their students to shut up for an hour on their Washington DC trip.”
“Our high school history books were printed in 1934,” explained another fictional Holocaust denier.
Finally, the last respondent said: “I don’t believe in Germans.”
A collection of Nazi memorabilia (credit: RAWPIXEL)Holocaust denial and distortion in the real world
Wikipedia in May banned three editors from working on articles related to Jewish history in Poland during World War II, in a bid to resolve editing disputes and safeguard its credibility.
But the online encyclopedia stopped short of taking more aggressive action in response to allegations of widespread Holocaust distortion on the platform.
The decision concludes more than two months of deliberation by Wikipedia’s Arbitration Committee, which acts as Supreme Court over the community of volunteers who edit the website.
The Arbitration Committee had opened an investigation in response to an unprecedented academic study concluding that a group of editors had gamed Wikipedia’s rules to introduce content that absolves Poland of blame for antisemitism and any Jewish suffering during the Holocaust, in line with the ultranationalist view prevailing in the country.
Asaf Elia-Shalev/JTA contributed to this report.
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