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עמוד:49
the exploitation of workers , but not regarding the planned extermination of a human group that , for Marxism , could hardly be defined or identified . Other ideologies also lacked the proper tools to relate to the phenomenon of genocide . The initial attempts - at first relative , and afterwards sweeping - to deny the great slaughter came from the Nazis , both old and new , and from small groups connected to the extreme left . The most astounding instance in this phase was that of Paul Rassinier , the author of the first book to engage in Holocaust denial - Le Passage de la Ligne ( Crossing the Line ) , published in 1948 , followed in 1950 by another book , The Holocaust Story and the Lies of Ulysses : A Study of the Nazi Concentration Camps and the Alleged Extermination of European Jewry . Rassinier , a socialist and pacifist , had himself been deported by the Nazis , yet he chose to apply the concepts of the First World War to the Second World War , and to view the charges leveled against Nazi Germany as a simple repetition of those that had been raised in the past against the German Empire of Wilhelm II . Although Holocaust denial appeared at quite an early stage , it gained momentum only in the late 1970 s and early 1980 s . A wave of publications that purported to be of a scholarly or academic nature began to appear in the late 1970 s . The book by David Irving , Hitler’s War , published in 1977 , caused an uproar , but it led to an ongoing debate on the question of whether or not Hitler had given the extermination order . Arthur Butz’s book , The Hoax of the Twentieth Century , was published in the same year . Butz , a professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University in Illinois , dressed his book in “ academic ” garb . He accused the Jewish institutions of spreading the “ lie of the Holocaust , ” and claimed that the only proofs for its presumed existence were the testimonies in the Nuremberg tribunal , that were extracted under torture . Unlike Rassinier , Butz did not justify the persecution of the Jews by the Germans , nor did he deny the phenomenon of the murder of Jews . Rather , he sought to prove that the total number of Jews who were murdered by the Germans did not exceed one million . The theses of the “ Holocaust deniers ” can be summarized as follows : Nazi Germany was not responsible for the war , and there was no justification for the anti-Fascist coalition . Moreover , there was no genocide , and the means that symbolized it , the gas chambers , never existed . The Holocaust was the product of a “ rumor , ” that became a “ myth , ” and afterwards a “ fraud ” in the service of “ international Zionism . ” The “ Final Solution ” was merely the deportation of the Jews to Eastern Europe , for their resettlement in order to utilize their labor force . The number of victims , which in any case can be explained by the problems faced by wartime Germany , was , in any event , extremely limited . It should be emphasized that the seeds of Holocaust denial had actually been planted by the Nazis themselves , who devoted much thought and effort to obscure their actions , even among the civilian population in Germany . Negation of the Holocaust is not supported by the discipline of history . It does not come in place of any historical approach , even if it seems at times that some author makes use of the historical method . Substantively , the conclusion that the Holocaust never occurred preceded the attempt to prove this conclusion . It is an admixture of a number of ideological components : anti-Semitism , anti-Zionism ( from which derives a type of Arab revisionism ) , pacifism , German ultranationalism , anti-Communism , and others . These elements appear to varying degrees . It is clear , for example , that German ultranationalism does not directly interest an American or French pacifist , but a French pacifist might himself voice arguments from the school of the German ultranationalist , thus excusing the country next door , while accusing his own community of chauvinism . Geographically , negation of the Holocaust can be found almost everywhere , from Sweden to Russia , from Australia to the United States , and obviously in Islamic lands . While the Communist countries did not allow this position to
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