“Holocaust deniers seek to make antisemitism acceptable, to provide legitimacy for Nazism and fascism, to claim that the Holocaust was a product of the Jewish imagination, and so on,” says Robert Williams, Advisor to the IHRA and former Chair of the IHRA’s Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial. The eventual goal of Holocaust denial is to recast history to erase the legacy and reality of the genocide of the Jews and related atrocities by the Nazis and their collaborators.
Holocaust distortion, on the other hand, can be much more subtle, and therefore easy to overlook. It doesn’t question whether the Holocaust happened; it rather excuses, misrepresents, or minimizes the history.
Although distortion often shares the same antisemitic goals as denial, it can be harder to identify the motives behind it, as there are some forms of distortion that stem from ignorance rather than antisemitism. Regardless of the motivation, however, distortion’s effect is always antisemitic and reinforces reinforces related biases. It opens the door to outright Holocaust denial or other forms of pernicious, dangerous, and violent antisemitism.
Holocaust distortion is a bridge between mainstream and radical ideas. It encourages people to question the impact of the Holocaust, its established facts, and the importance of its lessons, like the value of democracy and pluralistic, open societies.
In this sense, as retired IHRA Honorary Chairman Yehuda Bauer notes, “a half truth is worse than a full lie.”
