Denying the Holocaust

According to a recent survey, many young people believe the Holocaust is a myth. How is this possible?

It has come to my attention that one in five young Americans believe the Holocaust is a myth.

According to a new survey from the Economist/YouGov, 20 percent of participants between the ages of 18 and 29 said “yes” in response to the statement “The Holocaust is a myth.” Another third (ages 18-44) agreed that “The Holocaust has been exaggerated.”

Courtesy of YouGov/The Economist

The survey — which examined the beliefs of U.S. citizens about Israel, Jewish people and the Holocaust — was conducted between December 2-5.

Seriously?

My first thought was “Seriously?”

Truthfully, it was “What the f**k?” But nobody was around to hear.

After the initial reaction, incredulity took over.

Entrance of Auschwitz (Courtesy of Gallup News0

Can young people be this naive? Have public schools recklessly omitted the most horrific war crime in human history? How can anyone blithely deny a period that less than a century ago actualized mankind’s most feral nature and greatest atrocity, which was clearly documented by tons of film and still imagery and written testimonies?

Then I stopped to reassess our prevailing climate and culture. No doubt these numbers reflect a knee-jerk reaction to the Israel-Hamas conflict in which Gen Z and younger adults aligned with Gaza/Palestine and, by proxy, Islam and Infitada, and against the state of Israel.

No doubt these numbers reflect a knee-jerk reaction to the Israel-Hamas conflict in which Gen Z and younger adults aligned with Gaza/Palestine and, by proxy, Islam and Infitada, and against the state of Israel.

In the process — and by adopting this mindset — one in five essentially are “canceling” the Holocaust. To these young people, it never happened. Another 30 percent are “iffy.”

Longtime Holocaust deniers often use the euphemism “Revisionist.” Gen Z is simply not that sophisticated.

So it begs the question: How is denial even possible?

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My G-g-g-generation

Now I understand knee-jerk reactions come from young minds that are easily manipulated, especially when they trundle off the college.

But who am I to say? I was young and dumb once. Back then, we all rebelled against the man. Sex, drugs and rock and roll … Easy Rider … “Rage Against the Machine” … you know, all that.

Then we grew up.

Sure, a few renegade revolutionaries sporting Che Guevera t-shirts were throwing rocks at the cops from highway overpasses.

But that group either faded into obscurity … or became liberal arts professors.

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Gen Z goes to College

Gen Z (Photo courtesy of Adweek)

But this generation is different. Very different.

Today we have Gen Z, the Zoomers, the under 30s, whose lives are marked by Smartphones, the Great Recession (2007-09), social media, COVID aftereffects, hair dye and wall-to-wall neuroticism.

Generally speaking, they are college-educated, lonely, delicate, and alienated from behavioral norms such as resilience and personal relationships. And like all generations, they developed a unique worldview.

For Gen Z, that framework began germinating the moment they stepped on campus. The predominant theme is binary: Oppressor vs. oppressed. (For more information, see excerpts from “The Coddling of the American Mind,'‘ Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff, 2018).

Photo courtesy of the Wall Street Journal

The first order in the Academy is to learn the language of oppression.

For a long while, the glossary was relatively simple: Zoomers were taught that racism was everywhere and shouted it out both on campus and social media. Eventually, fascism and colonialism crept into the oppression lexicon.

Lately, due to the tragedy in the Middle East, the rhetoric has ramped up: genocide, Intifada and Apartheid have become fashionable. Nazi was adapted into the glossary, though Gen Z has an ambiguous and historically garbled definition.

Protesters then blindly string together these ad hominems as though they have Tourette’s, spontaneously and sometimes incoherently, but always aimed at the perceived oppressors. In this case, Israel and its primary supporter, the United States.

Regardless of beliefs, or ideology, all citizens have the right for their voices to be heard, as we’ve seen on college campuses and city streets nationwide. Support Intifada, protest Zionism, demand an end to war and take a stand (peacefully) however you deem fit.

But to disclaim the Holocaust? Remember, it happened before the state of Israel was born.

It takes a special kind of dogmatism to cancel history.

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“Night and Fog”

I remember my first exposure to the Holocaust. A high school history class .in 1971. I was 16. We were shown Night and Fog (1956), a French documentary showing in grainy footage the abandoned grounds of Auschwitz and Majdanek in occupied Poland while describing the lives of prisoners in the camps.

Night and Fog (1956)

Nobody could speak afterward. The images were too devastating for words. The skeletal bodies haphazardly strewn about, the bale-sized piles of human hair, barrels of gold teeth, bulldozers scooping insentient corpses into mass graves. We were silenced in disbelief. It was beyond haunting.

But there it was, reality documented on film, the actual obliteration of humanity in the Nazi concentration camps. Starvation … torture … executions … the ovens of Auschwitz.

It stuck with me for a very long time. Later I read Night (1960) by Elie Wiesel, the darkest, most sinister book I’ve ever read. The Diary of Anne Frank (1947) was, ironically, required reading in a college history class.

Why? ‘Explaining the Holocaust’ (2017) by Peter Hayes is perhaps the most comprehensive study of the concentration camps.

Then there were the films … first Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993), perhaps the most disturbing film ever made, and The Pianist (2002), based on the 1947 autobiography by Polish-Jewish composer and Holocaust survivor Władysław Szpilman.

These validations don’t appear to be part of Gen Z’s college curriculum.

When ideological capture trumps truth and facts, psychiatrists call it Denialism.

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Never Again

Denial of the Holocaust is not a matter of Academic Freedom, nor is it a First Amendment issue. Gen Z believes what it believes about the state of Israel, Zionism, Gaza and Palestine. However dogmatically driven, college professors are allowed the leeway to draw their curriculum.

But denying history creates a moral dilemma.

This new morality steering campus culture is antithetical to the traditional virtues of academic life: truthfulness, free inquiry, persuasion via reasoned argument, equal opportunity, judgment by merit, and the pursuit of excellence.

In taking account of Jewish people, the Holocaust, and the reality of genocide, deniers are not on the right side of history.

Perhaps Academia and Gen Z need a field trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum as a reminder — Never Again.

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(Note: This piece purposely avoids the controversial topic of anti-semitism, a characterization of anyone considered prejudiced against Jewish people and the state of Israel, but is just as easily used/misused as a label against legitimate criticism.)

Jim Geschke was inducted into the prestigious Marquis Who’s Who Registry in 2021.