Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? by Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman

Fascinating.

The title of Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It? pretty much tells it all - it is an academic exploration into the people who deny the Holocaust ever happened and their motivations for making this claim.

Of course, you may be wondering why someone would make a claim like this, despite the film footage of newly-liberated camps, eyewitness testimony from both victims and perpetrators, the population records that show that, indeed, some 6 million Jews did not survive World War II and damning circumstantial evidence from Hitler and members of his inner circle that alludes to a "Final Solution" to the "Jewish problem".

Well, the deniers are a motley lot. Some are educated and well-spoken and others are not. Some feel that Germany has become a martyred nation to the cause of eradicating racism. Others are pro-fascist in politics and want to get rid of the taint that Nazi-ism gives to fascism, so they try to exonerate the Nazis.


Auschwitz's infamous "Work sets you free" sign

Others are just plain anti-Semites and sincerely believe the Jews somehow "cooked up" the population figures or even somehow managed to conspire to kill off 6 milion of their own people in order to create sympathy for the creation of a Jewish country, namely, modern-day Israel.

It was a fascinating book, a little deep at the beginning and the end with the different theories on how to approach history, but the middle was quite informative. 
 
I rate this book 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Denying History.
 
Reviewed on February 11, 2005.