title: Holocaust denial

text: In 1961, a protégé of Barnes, David Hoggan, published "Der erzwungene Krieg" ("The Forced War") in West Germany, which claimed that Germany had been the victim of an Anglo-Polish conspiracy in 1939. Though "Der erzwungene Krieg" was primarily concerned with the origins of World War II, it also down-played or justified the effects of Nazi antisemitic measures in the pre-1939 period. For example, Hoggan justified the huge one billion Reichsmark fine imposed on the entire Jewish community in Germany after the 1938 "Kristallnacht" as a reasonable measure to prevent what he called "Jewish profiteering" at the expense of German insurance companies and alleged that no Jews were killed in the "Kristallnacht" (in fact, 91 German Jews were murdered in the "Kristallnacht"). Subsequently, Hoggan explicitly denied the Holocaust in 1969 in a book entitled "The Myth of the Six Million", which was published by the Noontide Press, a small Los Angeles publisher specializing in antisemitic literature.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In 1964, Paul Rassinier published "The Drama of the European Jews". Rassinier was himself a concentration camp survivor (he was held in Buchenwald for having helped French Jews escape the Nazis), and modern-day deniers continue to cite his works as scholarly research that questions the accepted facts of the Holocaust. Critics argued that Rassinier did not cite evidence for his claims and ignored information that contradicted his assertions; he nevertheless remains influential in Holocaust denial circles for being one of the first deniers to propose that a vast Zionist/Allied/Soviet conspiracy faked the Holocaust, a theme that would be picked up in later years by other authors.


title: Holocaust denial

text: Austin App, a La Salle University medieval English literature professor, is considered the first major mainstream American holocaust denier. App defended the Germans and Nazi Germany during World War II. He published numerous articles, letters, and books on Holocaust denial, quickly building a loyal following. App's work inspired the Institute for Historical Review, a California center founded in 1978 whose sole task is the denial of the Holocaust.


title: Holocaust denial

text: The publication of Arthur Butz's "The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The case against the presumed extermination of European Jewry" in 1976; and David Irving's "Hitler's War" in 1977 brought other similarly inclined individuals into the fold. Butz was a tenured associate professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University. In December 1978 and January 1979, Robert Faurisson, a French professor of literature at the University of Lyon, wrote two letters to "Le Monde" claiming that the gas chambers used by the Nazis to exterminate the Jews did not exist. A colleague of Faurisson, Jean-Claude Pressac, who initially shared Faurisson's views, later became convinced of the Holocaust's evidence while investigating documents at Auschwitz in 1979. He published his conclusions along with much of the underlying evidence in his 1989 book, "Auschwitz: Technique and operation of the gas chambers".


title: Holocaust denial

text: Henry Bienen, the former president of Northwestern University, has described Arthur Butz's view of the Holocaust as an "embarrassment to Northwestern". In 2006, sixty of Butz's colleagues from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty signed a censure describing Butz's Holocaust denial as "an affront to our humanity and our standards as scholars". The letter also called for Butz to "leave our Department and our University and stop trading on our reputation for academic excellence".


title: Holocaust denial

text: In 1978 the American far-right activist Willis Carto founded the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), an organization dedicated to publicly challenging the commonly accepted history of the Holocaust. The IHR's founding was inspired by Austin App, a La Salle professor of medieval English literature and considered the first major American holocaust denier. The IHR sought from the beginning to establish itself within the broad tradition of historical revisionism, by soliciting token supporters who were not from a neo-Nazi background such as James J. Martin and Samuel Edward Konkin III, and by promoting the writings of French socialist Paul Rassinier and American anti-war historian Harry Elmer Barnes, in an attempt to show that Holocaust denial had a base of support beyond neo-Nazis. The IHR republished most of Barnes's writings, which had been out of print since his death. While it included articles on other topics and sold books by mainstream historians, the majority of material published and distributed by IHR was devoted to questioning the facts surrounding the Holocaust.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In 1980, the IHR promised a $50,000 reward to anyone who could prove that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz. Mel Mermelstein wrote a letter to the editors of the "Los Angeles Times" and others including "The Jerusalem Post". The IHR wrote back, offering him $50,000 for proof that Jews were, in fact, gassed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Mermelstein, in turn, submitted a notarized account of his internment at Auschwitz and how he witnessed Nazi guards ushering his mother and two sisters and others towards (as he learned later) gas chamber number five. Despite this, the IHR refused to pay the reward. Represented by public interest attorney William John Cox, Mermelstein subsequently sued the IHR in the Superior Court of Los Angeles County for breach of contract, anticipatory repudiation, libel, injurious denial of established fact, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and declaratory relief. On October 9, 1981, both parties in the Mermelstein case filed motions for summary judgment in consideration of which Judge Thomas T. Johnson of the Superior Court of Los Angeles County took "judicial notice of the fact that Jews were gassed to death at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland during the summer of 1944," judicial notice meaning that the court treated the gas chambers as common knowledge, and therefore did not require evidence that the gas chambers existed. On August 5, 1985, Judge Robert A. Wenke entered a judgment based upon the Stipulation for Entry of Judgment agreed upon by the parties on July 22, 1985. The judgment required IHR and other defendants to pay $90,000 to Mermelstein and to issue a letter of apology to "Mr. Mel Mermelstein, a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau and Buchenwald, and all other survivors of Auschwitz" for "pain, anguish and suffering" caused to them.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In the "About the IHR" statement on their website, the IHR states, "The IHR does not 'deny' the Holocaust. Indeed, the IHR as such has no 'position' on any specific event..." British historian Richard J. Evans wrote that the Institute's acknowledgment "that a relatively small number of Jews were killed" was a means to draw attention away from its primary beliefs, i.e. that the number of victims was not in the millions and that Jews were not systematically murdered in gas chambers.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In 1984, James Keegstra, a Canadian high-school teacher, was charged under the Canadian "Criminal Code" for "promoting hatred against an identifiable group by communicating anti-Semitic statements to his students". During class, he would describe Jews as a people of profound evil who had "created the Holocaust to gain sympathy." He also tested his students in exams on his theories and opinion of Jews.


title: Holocaust denial

text: Keegstra was charged under s 281.2(2) of the "Criminal Code" (now s 319(2)), which provides that "Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group" commits a criminal offence. He was convicted at trial before the Alberta Court of Queen's Bench. The court rejected the argument, advanced by Keegstra and his lawyer, Doug Christie, that promoting hatred is a constitutionally protected freedom of expression as per s 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Keegstra appealed to the Alberta Court of Appeal. That court agreed with Keegstra, and he was acquitted. The Crown then appealed the case to the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled by a 4–3 majority that promoting hatred could be justifiably restricted under s 1 of the Charter. The Supreme Court restored Keegstra's conviction. He was fired from his teaching position shortly afterward.


title: Holocaust denial

text: The Toronto-based photo retoucher Ernst Zündel operated a small-press called Samisdat Publishers, which published and distributed Holocaust-denial material such as "Did Six Million Really Die?" by Richard Harwood (a pseudonym of Richard Verrall – a British neo-Nazi). In 1985, he was tried in "R. v. Zundel" and convicted under a "false news" law and sentenced to 15 months imprisonment by an Ontario court for "disseminating and publishing material denying the Holocaust". The Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg was a witness for the prosecution at the 1985 trial. Zündel's conviction was overturned in an appeal on a legal technicality, leading to a second trial in 1988, in which he was again convicted. The 1988 trial included, as witnesses for the defence, Fred A. Leuchter, David Irving and Robert Faurisson. The pseudo-scientific Leuchter report was presented as a defence document and was published in Canada in 1988 by Zundel's Samisdat Publishers, and in Britain in 1989 by Irving's Focal Point Publishing. In both of his trials, Zündel was defended by Douglas Christie and Barbara Kulaszka. His conviction was overturned in 1992 when the Supreme Court of Canada declared the "false news" law unconstitutional.


title: Holocaust denial

text: Zündel had a website, web-mastered by his wife Ingrid, which publicises his viewpoints. In January 2002, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal delivered a ruling in a complaint involving his website, in which it was found to be contravening the Canadian Human Rights Act. The court ordered Zündel to cease communicating hate messages. In February 2003, the American INS arrested him in Tennessee, US, on an immigration violations matter, and few days later, Zündel was sent back to Canada, where he tried to gain refugee status. Zündel remained in prison until March 1, 2005, when he was deported to Germany and prosecuted for disseminating hate propaganda. On February 15, 2007, Zündel was convicted on 14 counts of incitement under Germany's "Volksverhetzung" law, which bans the incitement of hatred against a portion of the population and given the maximum sentence of five years in prison.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In 1987, Bradley R. Smith, a former media director of the Institute for Historical Review, founded the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH). In the United States, CODOH has repeatedly attempted to place advertisements questioning whether the Holocaust happened, especially in college campus newspapers.


title: Holocaust denial

text: Bradley Smith took his message to college students—with little success. Smith referred to his tactics as the CODOH campus project. He said, "I don't want to spend time with adults anymore, I want to go to students. They are superficial. They are empty vessels to be filled." "What I wanted to do was I wanted to set forth three or four ideas that students might be interested in, that might cause them to think about things or to have questions about things. And I wanted to make it as simple as possible, and to set it up in a way that could not really be debated." Holocaust deniers have placed "Full page advertisements in college and university newspapers, including those of Brandeis University, Boston College, Pennsylvania State University, and Queens College (part of CUNY). Some of these ads arguing that the Holocaust never happened ran without comment; others generated op-ed pieces by professors and students". On September 8, 2009, student newspaper "The Harvard Crimson" ran a paid ad from Bradley R Smith. It was quickly criticized and the editor issued an apology, saying publishing the ad was a mistake.


title: Holocaust denial

text: The German philosopher and historian Ernst Nolte, starting in the 1980s, advanced a set of theories, which though not denying the Holocaust appeared to flirt with an Italian Holocaust denier, Carlo Mattogno, as a serious historian. In a letter to the Israeli historian Otto Dov Kulka of December 8, 1986, Nolte criticized the work of the French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson on the ground that the Holocaust did occur, but went on to argue that Faurisson's work was motivated by what Nolte claimed were the admirable motives of sympathy towards the Palestinians and opposition to Israel. In his 1987 book "Der europäische Bürgerkrieg" ("The European Civil War"), Nolte claimed that the intentions of Holocaust deniers are "often honourable", and that some of their claims are "not obviously without foundation". Nolte himself, though he has never denied the occurrence of the Holocaust, has claimed that the Wannsee Conference of 1942 never happened and that the minutes of the conference were post-war forgeries done by "biased" Jewish historians designed to discredit Germany.


title: Holocaust denial

text: The British historian Ian Kershaw has argued that Nolte was operating on the borderlines of Holocaust denial with his implied claim that the "negative myth" of Nazi Germany was created by Jewish historians, his allegations of the domination of Holocaust scholarship by "biased" Jewish historians, and his statements that one should withhold judgment on Holocaust deniers, whom Nolte takes considerable pains to stress are not exclusively Germans or fascists. In Kershaw's opinion, Nolte is attempting to imply that perhaps Holocaust deniers are on to something.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In a 1990 interview, Nolte implied that there was something to the Leuchter report: "If the revisionists [Holocaust deniers] and Leuchter among them have made it clear to the public that even 'Auschwitz' must be an object of scientific inquiry and controversy then they should be given credit for this. Even if it finally turned out that the number of victims was even greater and the procedures were even more horrific than has been assumed until now." In his 1993 book "Streitpunkte" ("Points of Contention"), Nolte praised the work of Holocaust deniers as superior to "mainstream scholars". Nolte wrote that "radical revisionists have presented research which, if one is familiar with the source material and the critique of the sources, is probably superior to that of the established historians of Germany". In a 1994 interview with "Der Spiegel" magazine, Nolte stated "I cannot rule out the importance of the investigation of the gas chambers in which they looked for remnants of the [chemical process engendered by Zyklon B]", and that "'Of course, I am against revisionists, but Fred Leuchter's 'study' of the Nazi gas ovens has to be given attention because one has to stay open to 'other' ideas."


title: Holocaust denial

text: The British historian Richard J. Evans in his 1989 book "In Hitler's Shadow" expressed the view that Nolte's reputation as a scholar was in ruins as a result of these and other controversial statements on his part. The American historian Deborah Lipstadt in a 2003 interview stated:


title: Holocaust denial

text: In 1988, the American historian Arno J. Mayer published a book entitled "Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?", which did not explicitly deny the Holocaust, but according to Lucy Dawidowicz lent support to Holocaust denial by stating that most people who died at Auschwitz were the victims of "natural causes" such as disease, not gassing. Dawidowicz argued that Mayer's statements about Auschwitz were "a breathtaking assertion". Holocaust historian Robert Jan van Pelt has written that Mayer's book is as close as a mainstream historian has ever come to supporting Holocaust denial. Holocaust deniers such as David Irving have often cited Mayer's book as one reason for embracing Holocaust denial. Though Mayer has been often condemned for his statement about the reasons for the Auschwitz death toll, his book does not deny the use of gas chambers at Auschwitz, as Holocaust deniers often claim.


title: Holocaust denial

text: Some mainstream Holocaust historians have labeled Mayer a denier. The Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer wrote that Mayer "popularizes the nonsense that the Nazis saw in Marxism and Bolshevism their main enemy, and the Jews unfortunately got caught up in this; when he links the destruction of the Jews to the ups and downs of German warfare in the Soviet Union, in a book that is so cocksure of itself that it does not need a proper scientific apparatus, he is really engaging in a much more subtle form of Holocaust denial".


title: Holocaust denial

text: Defenders of Mayer argue that his statement that "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable" has been taken out of context, particularly by Holocaust deniers. Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman observe that the paragraph from which the statement is taken asserts that the SS destroyed the majority of the documentation relating to the operation of the gas chambers in the death camps, which is why Mayer feels that sources for the operation of the gas chambers are "rare" and "unreliable".


title: Holocaust denial

text: The focus on so-called Allied atrocities during the war has been a theme in Holocaust denial literature, particularly in countries where outright denial of the Holocaust is illegal. According to historian Deborah Lipstadt, the concept of "comparable Allied wrongs", such as the expulsion of Germans after World War II and the bombing of Dresden, is at the center of, and a continuously repeated theme of, contemporary Holocaust denial; a phenomenon she calls "immoral equivalencies". Pierre Vidal-Naquet pointed out the same phenomenon in the earlier version of "Les Assassins de la mémoire" under the title "Auschwitz et le tiers monde" ("Les Assassins de la mémoire", Paris, 2005, pp. 170–180), and accurately about the declarations of Klaus Barbie's lawyer Jacques Vergès. In 1977, Martin Broszat, in a review of David Irving's book "Hitler's War", maintained that the picture of World War II drawn by Irving was done in a such way to imply moral equivalence between the actions of the Axis and Allied states with both sides equally guilty of terrible crimes, leading to Hitler's "fanatical, destructive will to annihilate" being downgraded to being "no longer an exceptional phenomenon".


title: Holocaust denial

text: According to James Najarian, Holocaust deniers working for the Institute for Historical Review are not trained in history and "put out sham scholarly articles in the mock-academic publication, the "Journal of Historical Review"". They appeal to "our objectivity, our sense of fair play, and our distrust of figurative language". Thus, they rely on facts to grab the readers' attention. These facts, however, are strung by what Najarian calls "fabricated decorum" and are re-interpreted for their use. For example, they pay particular attention to inconsistencies in numbers.


title: Holocaust denial

text: Holocaust denial propaganda in all forms has been shown to influence the audiences that it reaches. In fact, even the well-educated—that is, college graduates and current university students alike—are susceptible to such propaganda when it is presented before them. This stems from the growing disbelief that audiences feel after being exposed to such information, especially since Holocaust witnesses themselves are decreasing in number. Studies centered on the psychological effects of Holocaust denial propaganda confirm this assertion. Linda M. Yelland and William F. Stone, in particular, show that Denial essays decrease readers' belief in the Holocaust, regardless of their prior Holocaust awareness.


title: Holocaust denial

text: Gamal Abdel Nasser, the President of Egypt, told a German newspaper in 1964 that "no person, not even the most simple one, takes seriously the lie of the six million Jews that were murdered [in the Holocaust]."


title: Holocaust denial

text: Denials of the Holocaust have been promoted by various Middle Eastern figures and media. Holocaust denial is sponsored by some Middle Eastern governments, including Iran and Syria. In 2006 Robert Satloff writing in "The Washington Post", reported that "A respected Holocaust research institution recently reported that Egypt, Qatar and Saudi Arabia all promote Holocaust denial and protect Holocaust deniers."


title: Holocaust denial

text: Prominent figures from the Middle East have rarely made publicized visits to Auschwitz—Israel's Arab community being the exception. In 2010, Hadash MK Mohammed Barakeh visited, following a previous visit of two other Arab-Israeli lawmakers, and a group of about 100 Arab-Israeli writers and clerics in 2003.


title: Holocaust denial

text: Individuals from the Palestinian Authority, Hamas, and a number of Palestinian groups have engaged in various aspects of Holocaust denial.


title: Holocaust denial

text: Hamas have promoted Holocaust denial; Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi held that the Holocaust never occurred, that Zionists were behind the action of Nazis, and that Zionists funded Nazism.


title: Holocaust denial

text: A press release by Hamas in April 2000 decried "the so-called Holocaust, which is an alleged and invented story with no basis". In August 2009, Hamas' told UNRWA that it would "refuse" to allow Palestinian children to study the Holocaust, which it called "a lie invented by the Zionists" and referred to Holocaust education as a "war crime". Hamas continued to hold this position in 2011, when the organization's Ministry for Refugee Affairs said that Holocaust education was "intended to poison the minds of our children."


title: Holocaust denial

text: The thesis of the 1982 doctoral dissertation of Mahmoud Abbas, a co-founder of Fatah and president of the Palestinian National Authority, was "The Secret Connection between the Nazis and the Leaders of the Zionist Movement". In his 1983 book "" based on the dissertation, Abbas denied that six million Jews had died in the Holocaust; dismissing it as a "myth" and a "fantastic lie". At most, he wrote, 890,000 Jews were murdered by the Germans. Abbas claimed that the number of deaths has been exaggerated for political purposes. "It seems that the interest of the Zionist movement, however, is to inflate this figure [of Holocaust deaths] so that their gains will be greater. This led them to emphasize this figure [six million] in order to gain the solidarity of international public opinion with Zionism. Many scholars have debated the figure of six million and reached stunning conclusions—fixing the number of Jewish victims at only a few hundred thousand."


title: Holocaust denial

text: In his March 2006 interview with "Haaretz", Abbas stated, "I wrote in detail about the Holocaust and said I did not want to discuss numbers. I quoted an argument between historians in which various numbers of casualties were mentioned. One wrote there were 12 million victims and another wrote there were 800,000. I have no desire to argue with the figures. The Holocaust was a terrible, unforgivable crime against the Jewish nation, a crime against humanity that cannot be accepted by humankind. The Holocaust was a terrible thing and nobody can claim I denied it." While acknowledging the existence of the Holocaust in 2006 and 2014, Abbas has defended the position that Zionists collaborated with the Nazis to perpetrate it. In 2012, Abbas told Al Mayadeen, a Beirut TV station affiliated with Iran and Hezbollah, that he "challenges anyone who can deny that the Zionist movement had ties with the Nazis before World War II".


title: Holocaust denial

text: Surveys conducted by Sammy Smooha of the University of Haifa found that the fraction of Israeli Arabs denying that millions of Jews were murdered by the Nazis increased from 28% in 2006 to 40% in 2008. Smooha commented:


title: Holocaust denial

text: In Arab eyes disbelief in the very happening of the Shoah is not hate of Jews (embedded in the denial of the Shoah in the West) but rather a form of protest. Arabs not believing in the event of Shoah intend to express strong objection to the portrayal of the Jews as the ultimate victim and to the underrating of the Palestinians as a victim. They deny Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state that the Shoah gives legitimacy to. Arab disbelief in the Shoah is a component of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, unlike the ideological and anti-Semitic denial of the Holocaust and the desire to escape guilt in the West.


title: Holocaust denial

text: Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad frequently denied the Holocaust, formally 'questioning' the reliability of the historical evidence, although he on occasion confirmed belief in it. In a December 2005 speech, Ahmadinejad said that a legend was fabricated and had been promoted to protect Israel. He said:


title: Holocaust denial

text: The remarks immediately provoked international controversy as well as swift condemnation from government officials in Israel, Europe, and the United States. All six political parties in the German parliament signed a joint resolution condemning Ahmadinejad's Holocaust denial. In contrast, Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal described Ahmadinejad's comments as "courageous" and stated, "Muslim people will defend Iran because it voices what they have in their hearts, in particular the Palestinian people." In the United States, the Muslim Public Affairs Council condemned Ahmadinejad's remarks. In 2005, the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader, Mohammed Mahdi Akef, denounced what he called "the myth of the Holocaust" in defending Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust.


title: Holocaust denial

text: On December 11, 2006, the Iranian state-sponsored "International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust" began to widespread condemnation. The conference, called for and held at the behest of Ahmadinejad, was widely described as a "Holocaust denial conference" or a "meeting of Holocaust deniers", though Iran denied it was a Holocaust denial conference. A few months before it opened, the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi stated: "The Holocaust is not a sacred issue that one can't touch. I have visited the Nazi camps in Eastern Europe. I think it is exaggerated."


title: Holocaust denial

text: In 2013, in an interview with CNN, newly elected Iranian President Hassan Rouhani condemned the Holocaust, stating: "I can tell you that any crime that happens in history against humanity, including the crime the Nazis created towards the Jews as well as non-Jews is reprehensible and condemnable. Whatever criminality they committed against the Jews, we condemn." Iranian media later accused CNN of fabricating Rouhani's comments.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In his official 2013 Nowruz address, Supreme Leader of Iran Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei questioned the veracity of the Holocaust, remarking that "The Holocaust is an event whose reality is uncertain and if it has happened, it's uncertain how it has happened." This was consistent with Khamenei's previous comments regarding the Holocaust.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In 2015, the House of Cartoon and the Sarcheshmeh Cultural Complex in Iran organized the Second International Holocaust Cartoon Competition, a competition in which artists were encouraged to submit cartoons on the theme of Holocaust denial. The winner of the contest will receive $12,000. "Hamshahri", a popular Iranian newspaper, held a similar contest in 2006.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In Turkey, in 1996, the Islamic preacher Adnan Oktar under the pen name of Harun Yahya, distributed thousands of copies of a book which was originally published the previous year, entitled "Soykırım Yalanı" ("The Genocide Lie", referring to the Holocaust) and mailed unsolicited texts to American and European schools and colleges. The publication of "Soykırım Yalanı" sparked much public debate. This book claims, "what is presented as Holocaust is the death of some Jews due to the typhus plague during the war and the famine towards the end of the war caused by the defeat of the Germans." In March 1996, a Turkish painter and intellectual, Bedri Baykam, published a strongly worded critique of the book in the Ankara daily newspaper "Siyah-Beyaz" ("Black and White"). A legal suit for slander was brought against him. During the trial in September, Baykam exposed the real author of the book as Adnan Oktar. The suit was withdrawn in March 1997.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In some Eastern European countries, such as Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Romania, Holocaust deniers do not deny the very fact of mass murder of Jews, but deny some national or regional elements of the Holocaust.


title: Holocaust denial

text: According to Zvi Gitelman, Soviet writers tended either to ignore or downplay the Holocaust, treating it as one small part of a larger phenomenon of 20 million dead Soviet citizens during the Great Patriotic War. According to Gitelman, Soviet authorities were concerned about raising the consciousness of Soviet Jews and retarding their assimilation to the greater Soviet population. The Holocaust also raised the issue of collaboration with the Nazi occupiers, an uncomfortable topic for Soviet historiography.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In 2018, the United States Department of State warned about "the glorification of the Ustasha regime and denial of the Holocaust" in Croatia, citing the placement of a plaque with the Ustasha-era salute 'Za dom spremni' on the grounds of a concentration camp memorial site, far-right rallies and the concert of the controversial band Thompson among other events. Efraim Zuroff of the Simon Wiesenthal Center describes Croatia as a "cradle of Holocaust distortion". Holocaust denial in Croatia typically involves the downplaying or denial of the Holocaust carried out by the Ustasha regime, particularly against Serbs and Jews at the Jasenovac concentration camp and it is done by public figures, though the regime's victims also included Roma and anti-fascist Croats. The Society for Research of the Threefold Jasenovac Camp in Croatia, an NGO with authors and academics among its members, claims that Jasenovac was a labour camp during World War II and that it was later used by Yugoslav Communists to imprison Ustasha members and regular Croatian Home Guard army troops until 1948, then alleged Stalinists until 1951. Following a series of book publications denying the Ustashe regime's crimes, the Simon Wiesenthal Center urged Croatian authorities in 2019 to ban such works, noting that they "would immediately be banned in Germany and Austria and rightfully so".


title: Holocaust denial

text: In Hungary, Holocaust distortion and denial take place in the form of downplaying the country’s role in the killing and deportation of Jews. The Arrow Cross Party committed numerous crimes and killed or deported Jews. A total of 437,000 Jews were deported by Miklós Horthy's government in the Kingdom of Hungary, an Axis collaborator.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In Serbia, Holocaust distortion and denial is manifested in the downplaying of Milan Nedić and Dimitrije Ljotić's roles in the extermination of Serbia's Jews in concentration camps in Nedić’s Serbia, by a number of Serbian historians. Serb collaborationist armed forces, including the Chetniks, were involved, either directly or indirectly, in the mass killings of mainly Jews and Roma as well as Croats, Muslims and those Serbs who sided with any anti-German resistance. Since the end of the war, Serbian collaboration in the Holocaust has been the subject of historical revisionism by Serbian leaders.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In Slovakia, some anti-communist writers claim that Jozef Tiso was a savior of Jews or that the Slovak State was not responsible for the Holocaust in Slovakia.


title: Holocaust denial

text: The post-Soviet radical right activists do not question the existence of Nazi death camps or Jewish ghettos. However, they deny the participation of local population in anti-Jewish pogroms or the contribution of national paramilitary organizations in capture and execution of Jews. Thus, denial of the antisemitic nature and participation in the Holocaust of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army has become a central component of the intellectual history of the Ukrainian diaspora and nationalists.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In France, Holocaust denial became more prominent in the 1990s as "négationnisme", though the movement has existed in ultra-left French politics since at least the 1960s, led by figures such as Pierre Guillaume (who was involved in the bookshop La Vieille Taupe during the 1960s). Elements of the extreme far-right in France have begun to build on each other's negationist arguments, which often span beyond the Holocaust to cover a range of antisemitic views, incorporating attempts to tie the Holocaust to the Biblical massacre of the Canaanites, critiques of Zionism, and other material fanning what has been called a "conspiratorial Judeo-phobia" designed to legitimize and "banalize" antisemitism.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In Belgium in 2001, Roeland Raes, the ideologue and vice-president of one of the country's largest political parties, the Vlaams Blok, gave an interview on Dutch TV where he cast doubt over the number of Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. In the same interview, he questioned the scale of the Nazis' use of gas chambers and the authenticity of Anne Frank's diary. In response to the media assault following the interview, Raes was forced to resign his position but vowed to remain active within the party. Three years later, the Vlaams Blok was convicted of racism and chose to disband. Immediately afterwards, it legally reformed under the new name Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest) with the same leaders and the same membership.


title: Holocaust denial

text: The trial of a Canadian woman, Monika Schaefer, and her German-Canadian brother, Alfred Schaefer started in Germany in early July 2018. They were charged with "Volksverhetzung", "incitement to hatred". The pair had published video clips on YouTube of their denial of the genocide of Jews. In the clips, Alfred Schaefer said that Jews wanted to destroy Germans, blamed them for starting both World Wars, and referred to the Holocaust as a "Jewish fantasy". Monika Schaefer was arrested in January 2018 in Germany while attending a court hearing of Sylvia Stolz. Schaefer had been the Green Party candidate in the Alberta riding of Yellowhead during the federal elections in 2006, 2008, and 2011, but was expelled from the party after news reports surfaced of a July 2016 video where she describes the Holocaust as "the most persistent lie in all of history" and insisted that those in concentration camps had been kept as healthy and as well-fed as possible. In late October 2018, Monika Schaefer was convicted of the charge of "incitement of the people" (often reworded as "incitement of hatred" by the news media). She was sentenced to ten months while Alfred Schaefer, also convicted, received a sentence of three years and two months.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In January 2019, a survey conducted by Opinion Matters, on behalf of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust found that 5% of UK adults did not believe the Holocaust took place and one in 12 (8%) believed its scale has been exaggerated. One in five respondents incorrectly answered that less than 2 million Jews were murdered, and 45% couldn't say how many people were murdered in the Holocaust. Speaking in light of the survey's findings, Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: "One person questioning the truth of the Holocaust is one too many, and so it is up to us to redouble our efforts to ensure future generations know that it did happen and become witnesses to one of the darkest episodes in our history." The BBC Radio 4 More or Less programme, specialising on statistics, investigated the survey finding it was unlikely to be accurate. Participants were incentivised to complete the online survey by shopping vouchers encouraging speedy answering, and the principal question was a "reverse question" with most participants having to give the reverse answer to surrounding questions requiring careful answering. Another question asked how many Jewish people had been murdered in the holocaust with only 0.2% of participants giving the answer zero, which was considered to be a closer estimate of the number of UK adults that did not believe the Holocaust took place.


title: Holocaust denial

text: Japanese Holocaust denial first appeared in 1989 and reached its peak in 1995 with the publication in February 1995 by the Japanese magazine "", a 250,000-circulation monthly published by Bungei Shunju, of a Holocaust denial article by physician Masanori Nishioka which stated: "The 'Holocaust' is a fabrication. There were no execution gas chambers in Auschwitz or in any other concentration camp. Today, what is displayed as 'gas chambers' at the remains of the Auschwitz camp in Poland are a post-war fabrication by the Polish communist regime or by the Soviet Union, which controlled the country. Not once, neither at Auschwitz nor in any territory controlled by the Germans during the Second World War, was there 'mass murder of Jews' in 'gas chambers." The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center instigated a boycott of Bungei Shunju advertisers, including Volkswagen, Mitsubishi, and Cartier. Within days, Bungei Shunju shut down "Marco Polo" and its editor, Kazuyoshi Hanada, quit, as did the president of Bungei Shunju, Kengo Tanaka.


title: Holocaust denial

text: According to a 2020 survey of American adult Millennials and Generation Z members, 24% said the Holocaust might be a myth or had been exaggerated.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In 2022, the United Nations adopted a resolution aimed at combating Holocaust denial and antisemitism. The resolution was proposed by Germany and Israel.


title: Holocaust denial

text: Scholarly response to Holocaust denial can be roughly divided into three categories. Some academics refuse to engage Holocaust deniers or their arguments at all, on grounds that doing so lends them unwarranted legitimacy. The second group of scholars, typified by the American historian Deborah Lipstadt, have tried to raise awareness of the methods and motivations of Holocaust denial without legitimizing the deniers themselves. "We need not waste time or effort answering the deniers' contentions," Lipstadt wrote. "It would be never-ending... Their commitment is to an ideology and their 'findings' are shaped to support it." A third group, typified by the Nizkor Project, responds to arguments and claims made by Holocaust denial groups by pointing out inaccuracies and errors in their evidence.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In December 1991 the American Historical Association, the oldest and largest society of historians and teachers of history in the United States, issued the following statement: "The American Historical Association Council strongly deplores the publicly reported attempts to deny the fact of the Holocaust. No serious historian questions that the Holocaust took place." This followed a strong reaction by many of its members and commentary in the press against a near-unanimous decision that the AHA had made in May 1991 that studying the "significance of the Holocaust" should be encouraged. The association's May 1991 statement was in response to an incident where certain of its members had questioned the reality of the Holocaust. The December 1991 declaration is a reversal of the AHA's earlier stance that the association should not set a precedent by certifying historical facts. The AHA has also stated that Holocaust denial is "at best, a form of academic fraud".


title: Holocaust denial

text: Literary theorist Jean Baudrillard described Holocaust denial as "part of the extermination itself". Holocaust survivor and Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel, during a 1999 discussion at the White House in Washington, D.C., called the Holocaust "the most documented tragedy in recorded history. Never before has a tragedy elicited so much witness from the killers, from the victims and even from the bystanders—millions of pieces here in the museum what you have, all other museums, archives in the thousands, in the millions."


title: Holocaust denial

text: Deborah Lipstadt's 1993 book, "Denying the Holocaust", sharply criticized various Holocaust deniers, including British author David Irving, for deliberately misrepresenting evidence to justify their preconceived conclusions. In the book, Lipstadt named Irving as "one of the more dangerous" Holocaust deniers, because he was a published author, and was viewed by some as a legitimate military historian. He was "familiar with historical evidence", she wrote, and "bends it until it conforms with his ideological leanings and political agenda". In 1996, Irving filed a libel suit against Lipstadt and her publisher, Penguin Books. Irving, who appeared as a defense witness in Ernst Zündel's trial in Canada, and once declared at a rally of Holocaust deniers that "more women died in the back seat of Edward Kennedy's car than ever died in a gas chamber at Auschwitz," claimed that Lipstadt's allegation damaged his reputation. American historian Christopher Browning, an expert witness for the defense, wrote a comprehensive essay for the court summarizing the voluminous evidence for the reality of the Holocaust, and under cross-examination, effectively countered all of Irving's principal arguments to the contrary.[96] Cambridge historian Richard J. Evans, another defense expert witness, spent two years examining Irving's writings and confirmed his misrepresentations, including evidence that he had knowingly used forged documents as source material. After a two-month trial in London the trial judge, Justice Charles Gray, issued a 333-page ruling against Irving, which referred to him as a "Holocaust denier" and "right-wing pro-Nazi polemicist."


title: Holocaust denial

text: Ken McVay, an American resident in Canada, was disturbed by the efforts of organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center to suppress the speech of the Holocaust deniers, feeling that it was better to confront them openly than to try to censor them. On the Usenet newsgroup "alt.revisionism" he began a campaign of "truth, fact, and evidence", working with other participants on the newsgroup to uncover factual information about the Holocaust and counter the arguments of the deniers by proving them to be based upon misleading evidence, false statements, and outright lies. He founded the Nizkor Project to expose the activities of the Holocaust deniers, who responded to McVay with personal attacks, slander, and death threats.


title: Holocaust denial

text: A number of public figures have spoken out against Holocaust denial. In 2006, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said: "Remembering is a necessary rebuke to those who say the Holocaust never happened or has been exaggerated. Holocaust denial is the work of bigots; we must reject their false claims whenever, wherever and by whomever they are made." In January 2007, the United Nations General Assembly condemned "without reservation any denial of the Holocaust", though Iran disassociated itself from the resolution.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In July 2013, Iran's then president-elect Hassan Rohani described Ahmadinejad's remarks about the Holocaust and Israel as "hate rhetoric" and in September 2013 Rohani stated that "The Nazis carried out a massacre that cannot be denied, especially against the Jewish people" and "The massacre by the Nazis was condemnable. We never want to sit by side with the Nazis...They committed a crime against Jews — which is a crime against ... all of humanity." While declining to give a specific number of Jewish victims, Iranian analysts suggested that "Rouhani pushed the envelope as far as it could go ... without infuriating the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and other conservatives back home."


title: Holocaust denial

text: Critics of Holocaust denial also include members of the Auschwitz SS. Camp physician and SS-"Untersturmführer" Hans Münch considered the facts of Auschwitz "so firmly determined that one cannot have any doubt at all", and described those who negate what happened at the camp as "malevolent" people who have "personal interest to want to bury in silence things that cannot be buried in silence". Zyklon B handler and SS-"Oberscharführer" Josef Klehr said that anyone who maintains that nobody was gassed at Auschwitz must be "crazy or in the wrong". SS-"Unterscharführer" Oswald Kaduk stated that he did not consider those who maintain such a thing as normal people. Hearing about Holocaust denial compelled former SS-"Rottenführer" Oskar Gröning to publicly speak about what he witnessed at Auschwitz, and denounce Holocaust deniers, stating:


title: Holocaust denial

text: Holocaust denial is given as an example of antisemitism in the Working Definition of Antisemitism, adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance as well as the United Kingdom, Israel, Austria, Scotland, Romania, Germany and Bulgaria. The European Parliament voted in favor of a resolution calling for member states to adopt the definition on June 1, 2017.


title: Holocaust denial

text: The "Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity" defines Holocaust denial as "a new form of anti-Semitism, but one that hinges on age-old motifs". The Anti-Defamation League has stated that "Holocaust denial is a contemporary form of the classic anti-Semitic doctrine of the evil, manipulative and threatening world Jewish conspiracy" and French historian Valérie Igounet has written that "Holocaust denial is a convenient polemical substitute for anti-semitism."


title: Holocaust denial

text: According to Walter Reich, psychiatrist and then a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, one-time director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and now professor of international affairs at George Washington University:


title: Holocaust denial

text: The French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet described the motivation of deniers more succinctly, explaining, "One revives the dead in order the better to strike the living." German political scientist Matthias Küntzel has argued, "Every denial of the Holocaust... contains an appeal to repeat it."


title: Holocaust denial

text: Holocaust denial is widely viewed as failing to adhere to principles for the treatment of evidence that mainstream historians (as well as scholars in other fields) regard as basic to rational inquiry.


title: Holocaust denial

text: The Holocaust was well documented by the bureaucracy of the Nazi government itself. It was further witnessed by the Allied forces who entered Germany and its associated Axis states towards the end of World War II. It was also witnessed from the inside by non-Jewish captives such as Catholic French Resistance member André Rogerie who wrote extensively and testified about his experiences in seven camps including Auschwitz-Birkenau and also produced the oldest contemporary sketch of a camp crematorium.


title: Holocaust denial

text: According to researchers Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, there is a "convergence of evidence" that proves that the Holocaust happened. This evidence includes:


title: Holocaust denial

text: Much of the controversy surrounding the claims of Holocaust deniers centers on the methods used to present arguments that the Holocaust allegedly "never happened as commonly accepted". Numerous accounts have been given by Holocaust deniers (including evidence presented in court cases) of claimed facts and evidence; however, independent research has shown these claims to be based upon flawed research, biassed statements, or even deliberately falsified evidence. Opponents of Holocaust denial have documented numerous instances in which such evidence was altered or manufactured (see Nizkor Project and David Irving). According to Pierre Vidal-Naquet, "in our society of image and spectacle, extermination on paper leads to extermination in reality."


title: Holocaust denial

text: Holocaust denial is explicitly or implicitly illegal in 17 countries: Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Switzerland. Romania officially denied the Holocaust occurred on its territory up until the Wiesel Commission in 2004. The European Union's Framework decision on Racism and Xenophobia states that denying or grossly trivializing "crimes of genocide" should be made "punishable in all EU Member States".


title: Holocaust denial

text: Such legislation remains controversial. In October 2007, a tribunal declared Spain's genocide denial law unconstitutional. In 2007 Italy rejected a denial law proposing a prison sentence of up to four years. In 2006 the Netherlands rejected a draft law proposing a maximum sentence of one year on denial of genocidal acts in general, although specifically denying the Holocaust remains a criminal offense there. The United Kingdom has twice rejected Holocaust denial laws. Denmark and Sweden have also rejected such legislation.


title: Holocaust denial

text: A number of deniers have been prosecuted under various countries' denial laws. French literature professor Robert Faurisson, for example, was convicted and punished under the Gayssot Act in 1990. Some historians oppose such laws, among them Pierre Vidal-Naquet, an outspoken critic of Faurisson, on the grounds that denial legislation imposes "historical truth as legal truth". Other academics favor criminalization. Holocaust denial, they contend, is "the worst form of racism and its most respectable version because it pretends to be a research". Holocaust historian Deborah E. Lipstadt expressed her opposition to laws against expressing Holocaust denial, saying, "I don’t think they work. I think they turn whatever is being outlawed into forbidden fruit." She also said that politicians should not be able to decide what can and cannot be said.


title: Holocaust denial

text: In February 2006, Irving was convicted in Austria, where Holocaust denial is illegal, for a speech he had made in 1989 in which he denied the existence of gas chambers at Auschwitz. Irving was aware of the outstanding arrest warrant, but chose to go to Austria anyway "to give a lecture to a far-right student fraternity". Although he pleaded guilty to the charge, Irving said he had been "mistaken", and had changed his opinions on the Holocaust. "I said that then, based on my knowledge at the time, but by 1991 when I came across the Eichmann papers, I wasn't saying that anymore and I wouldn't say that now. The Nazis did murder millions of Jews." Irving served 13 months of a 3-year sentence in an Austrian prison, including the period between his arrest and conviction, and was deported in early 2007. The episode sparked intense international debate over the limits of freedom of speech. Upon hearing of Irving's sentence, Lipstadt said, "I am not happy when censorship wins, and I don't believe in winning battles via censorship... The way of fighting Holocaust deniers is with history and with truth."


title: Holocaust denial

text: According to "CNN", upon Irving's return to the UK, he "vow[ed] to repeat views denying the Holocaust that led to his conviction" stating he felt "no need any longer to show remorse" for his Holocaust views.


title: Holocaust denial

text: Other acts of genocide have met similar attempts to deny and minimize them. Gregory H. Stanton, formerly of the US State Department and the founder of Genocide Watch, lists denial as the final stage of a genocide development: "Denial is the eighth stage that always follows a genocide. It is among the surest indicators of further genocidal massacres. The perpetrators of genocide dig up the mass graves, burn the bodies, try to cover up the evidence and intimidate the witnesses. They deny that they committed any crimes, and often blame what happened on the victims."


title: Holocaust denial

text: Holocaust denial is often compared to Armenian genocide denial because of similar tactics of misrepresenting evidence, false equivalence, claiming that atrocities were invented by war propaganda and that powerful lobbies manufacture genocide allegations for their own profit, subsuming one-sided systematic extermination into war deaths, and shifting blame from the perpetrators to the victims of genocide. Both forms of negationism share the goal of rehabilitating the ideologies which brought genocide about.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Kushan Empire (; , ; ; Brahmi: , ""; BHS: ; , ; ) was a syncretic empire, formed by the Yuezhi, in the Bactrian territories in the early 1st century. It spread to encompass much of modern-day territory of, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and northern India, at least as far as Saketa and Sarnath near Varanasi (Benares), where inscriptions have been found dating to the era of the Kushan Emperor Kanishka the Great.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Kushans were most probably one of five branches of the Yuezhi confederation, an Indo-European nomadic people of possible Tocharian origin, who migrated from northwestern China (Xinjiang and Gansu) and settled in ancient Bactria. The founder of the dynasty, Kujula Kadphises, followed Greek religious ideas and iconography after the Greco-Bactrian tradition, and being a follower of Shaivism. The Kushans in general were also great patrons of Buddhism, and, starting with Emperor Kanishka, they also employed elements of Zoroastrianism in their pantheon. They played an important role in the spread of Buddhism to Central Asia and China.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Kushans possibly used the Greek language initially for administrative purposes, but soon began to use the Bactrian language. Kanishka sent his armies north of the Karakoram mountains. A direct road from Gandhara to China remained under Kushan control for more than a century, encouraging travel across the Karakoram and facilitating the spread of Mahayana Buddhism to China. The Kushan dynasty had diplomatic contacts with the Roman Empire, Sasanian Persia, the Aksumite Empire and the Han dynasty of China. The Kushan Empire was at the center of trade relations between the Roman Empire and China: according to Alain Daniélou, "for a time, the Kushana Empire was the centerpoint of the major civilizations". While much philosophy, art, and science was created within its borders, the only textual record of the empire's history today comes from inscriptions and accounts in other languages, particularly Chinese.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Kushan Empire fragmented into semi-independent kingdoms in the 3rd century AD, which fell to the Sasanians invading from the west, establishing the Kushano-Sasanian Kingdom in the areas of Sogdiana, Bactria and Gandhara. In the 4th century, the Guptas, an Indian dynasty also pressed from the east. The last of the Kushan and Kushano-Sasanian kingdoms were eventually overwhelmed by invaders from the north, known as the Kidarites, and then the Hephthalites.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Chinese sources describe the "Guìshuāng" (貴霜, Old Chinese: "*kuj-s [s]raŋ"), "i.e." the Kushans, as one of the five aristocratic tribes of the Yuezhi. Many scholars believe that the Yuezhi were a people of Indo-European origin. A specifically Tocharian origin of the Yuezhi is often suggested. An Iranian, specifically Saka, origin, also has some support among scholars. Others suggest that the Yuezhi might have originally been a nomadic Iranian people, who were then partially assimilated by settled Tocharians, thus containing both Iranian and Tocharian elements.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Yuezhi were described in the "Records of the Great Historian" and the "Book of Han" as living in the grasslands of eastern Xinjiang and northwestern part of Gansu, in the northwest of modern-day China, until their King was beheaded by the Xiongnu (匈奴) who were also at war with China, which eventually forced them to migrate west in 176–160 BC. The five tribes constituting the Yuezhi are known in Chinese history as "Xiūmì" (休密), "Guìshuāng" (貴霜), "Shuāngmǐ" (雙靡), "Xìdùn" (肸頓), and "Dūmì" (都密).


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Yuezhi reached the Hellenic kingdom of Greco-Bactria (in northern Afghanistan and Uzbekistan) around 135 BC. The displaced Greek dynasties resettled to the southeast in areas of the Hindu Kush and the Indus basin (in present-day Afghanistan and Pakistan), occupying the western part of the Indo-Greek Kingdom.


title: Kushan Empire

text: In South Asia , Kushan emperors regularly used the dynastic name "ΚΟϷΑΝΟ" ("Koshano") on their coinage. Several inscriptions in Sanskrit in the Brahmi script, such as the Mathura inscription of the statue of Vima Kadphises, refer to the Kushan Emperor as , "Ku-ṣā-ṇa" ("Kushana"). Some later Indian literary sources referred to the Kushans as "Turushka", a name which in later Sanskrit sources was confused with Turk, "probably due to the fact that Tukharistan passed into the hands of the western Turks in the seventh century". According to John M. Rosenfield, "Turushka", "Tukhāra" or "Tukhāra" are variations of the word "Tokhari" in Indian writings. Yet, according to Wink, "nowadays no historian considers them to be Turkish-Mongoloid or "Hun", although there is no doubt about their Central-Asian origin."


title: Kushan Empire

text: Some traces remain of the presence of the Kushans in the area of Bactria and Sogdiana in the 2nd-1st century BC, where they had displaced the Sakas, who moved further south. Archaeological structures are known in Takht-i Sangin, Surkh Kotal (a monumental temple), and in the palace of Khalchayan. On the ruins of ancient Hellenistic cities such as Ai-Khanoum, the Kushans are known to have built fortresses. Various sculptures and friezes from this period are known, representing horse-riding archers, and, significantly, men such as the with artificially deformed skulls, a practice well attested in nomadic Central Asia. Some of the Khalchayan sculptural scenes are also thought to depict the Kushans fighting against the Sakas. In these portrayals, the Yuezhis are shown with a majestic demeanour, whereas the Sakas are typically represented with side-whiskers, and more or less grotesque facial expressions.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Chinese first referred to these people as the Yuezhi and said they established the Kushan Empire, although the relationship between the Yuezhi and the Kushans is still unclear. Ban Gu's "Book of Han" tells us the Kushans (Kuei-shuang) divided up Bactria in 128 BC. Fan Ye's "Book of Later Han" "relates how the chief of the Kushans, Ch'iu-shiu-ch'ueh (the Kujula Kadphises of coins), founded by means of the submission of the other Yueh-chih clans the Kushan Empire."


title: Kushan Empire

text: The earliest documented ruler, and the first one to proclaim himself as a Kushan ruler, was Heraios. He calls himself a "tyrant" in Greek on his coins, and also exhibits skull deformation. He may have been an ally of the Greeks, and he shared the same style of coinage. Heraios may have been the father of the first Kushan emperor Kujula Kadphises.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Chinese "Book of Later Han" chronicles then gives an account of the formation of the Kushan empire based on a report made by the Chinese general Ban Yong to the Chinese Emperor c. AD 125:


title: Kushan Empire

text: In the 1st century BC, the "Guishuang" (Ch: 貴霜) gained prominence over the other Yuezhi tribes, and welded them into a tight confederation under commander Kujula Kadphises. The name "Guishuang" was adopted in the West and modified into "Kushan" to designate the confederation, although the Chinese continued to call them "Yuezhi".


title: Kushan Empire

text: Gradually wresting control of the area from the Scythian tribes, the Kushans expanded south into the region traditionally known as Gandhara (an area primarily in Pakistan's Pothowar and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa region) and established twin capitals in Begram. and Charsadda, then known as Kapisa and Pushklavati respectively.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Kushans adopted elements of the Hellenistic culture of Bactria. They adopted the Greek alphabet to suit their own language (with the additional development of the letter Þ "sh", as in "Kushan") and soon began minting coinage on the Greek model. On their coins they used Greek language legends combined with Pali legends (in the Kharoshthi script), until the first few years of the reign of Kanishka. After the middle of Kanishka's reign, they used Kushan language legends (in an adapted Greek script), combined with legends in Greek (Greek script) and legends in Prakrit (Kharoshthi script).


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Kushans "adopted many local beliefs and customs, including Zoroastrianism and the two rising religions in the region, the Greek cults and Buddhism". From the time of Vima Takto, many Kushans started adopting aspects of Buddhist culture, and like the Egyptians, they absorbed the strong remnants of the Greek culture of the Hellenistic Kingdoms, becoming at least partly Hellenised. The great Kushan emperor Vima Kadphises may have embraced Shaivism (a sect of Hinduism), as surmised by coins minted during the period. The following Kushan emperors represented a wide variety of faiths including Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Shaivism.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The rule of the Kushans linked the seagoing trade of the Indian Ocean with the commerce of the Silk Road through the long-civilized Indus Valley. At the height of the dynasty, the Kushans loosely ruled a territory that extended to the Aral Sea through present-day Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and Pakistan into northern India.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The loose unity and comparative peace of such a vast expanse encouraged long-distance trade, brought Chinese silks to Rome, and created strings of flourishing urban centers.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Rosenfield notes that archaeological evidence of a Kushan rule of long duration is present in an area stretching from Surkh Kotal, Begram, the summer capital of the Kushans, Peshawar, the capital under Kanishka I, Taxila, and Mathura, the winter capital of the Kushans. The Kushans introduced for the first time a form of governance which consisted of "Kshatrapas" (Brahmi:, "Kṣatrapa", "Satraps") and "Mahakshatrapa" (Brahmi:, "Mahakṣatrapa", "Great Satraps").


title: Kushan Empire

text: Other areas of probable rule include Khwarezm and its capital city of Toprak-Kala, Kausambi (excavations of Allahabad University), Sanchi and Sarnath (inscriptions with names and dates of Kushan kings), Malwa and Maharashtra, and Odisha (imitation of Kushan coins, and large Kushan hoards).


title: Kushan Empire

text: Kushan invasions in the 1st century AD had been given as an explanation for the migration of Indians from the Indian Subcontinent toward Southeast Asia according to proponents of a Greater India theory by 20th-century Indian nationalists. However, there is no evidence to support this hypothesis.


title: Kushan Empire

text: In the East, as late as the 3rd century AD, decorated coins of Huvishka were dedicated at Bodh Gaya together with other gold offerings under the "Enlightenment Throne" of the Buddha, suggesting direct Kushan influence in the area during that period. Coins of the Kushans are found in abundance as far as Bengal, and the ancient Bengali state of Samatata issued coins copied from the coinage of Kanishka I, although probably only as a result of commercial influence. Coins in imitation of Kushan coinage have also been found abundantly in the eastern state of Orissa.


title: Kushan Empire

text: In the West, the Kushan state covered the Pārata state of Balochistan, western Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan was known for the Kushan Buddhist city of Merv.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Northward, in the 1st century AD, the Kujula Kadphises sent an army to the Tarim Basin to support the city-state of Kucha, which had been resisting the Chinese invasion of the region, but they retreated after minor encounters. In the 2nd century AD, the Kushans under Kanishka made various forays into the Tarim Basin, where they had various contacts with the Chinese. Kanishka held areas of the Tarim Basin apparently corresponding to the ancient regions held by the Yüeh-zhi, the possible ancestors of the Kushan. There was Kushan influence on coinage in Kashgar, Yarkand, and Khotan. According to Chinese chronicles, the Kushans (referred to as Da Yuezhi in Chinese sources) requested, but were denied, a Han princess, even though they had sent presents to the Chinese court. In retaliation, they marched on Ban Chao in AD 90 with a force of 70,000 but were defeated by the smaller Chinese force. Chinese chronicles relate battles between the Kushans and the Chinese general Ban Chao. The Yuezhi retreated and paid tribute to the Chinese Empire. The regions of the Tarim Basin were all ultimately conquered by Ban Chao. Later, during the Yuánchū period (AD 114–120), the Kushans sent a military force to install Chenpan, who had been a hostage among them, as king of Kashgar.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Several Kushan fortresses are known, particularly in Bactria, which were often rebuilt on top of Hellenistic fortifications, as in Kampir Tepe. They are often characterized by arrow-shaped loopholes for archers.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Kushan rulers are recorded for a period of about three centuries, from circa AD 30 to circa 375, until the invasions of the Kidarites. They ruled around the same time as the Western Satraps, the Satavahanas, and the first Gupta Empire rulers.


title: Kushan Empire

text: These conquests by Kujula Kadphises probably took place sometime between AD 45 and 60 and laid the basis for the Kushan Empire which was rapidly expanded by his descendants.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Kujula issued an extensive series of coins and fathered at least two sons, Sadaṣkaṇa (who is known from only two inscriptions, especially the Rabatak inscription, and apparently never ruled), and seemingly Vima Takto.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Vima Takto (Ancient Chinese: 閻膏珍 "Yangaozhen") is mentioned in the Rabatak inscription (another son, Sadashkana, is mentioned in an inscription of Senavarman, the King of Odi). He was the predecessor of Vima Kadphises, and Kanishka I. He expanded the Kushan Empire into the northwest of South Asia. The Hou Hanshu says:


title: Kushan Empire

text: Vima Kadphises (Kushan language: Οοημο Καδφισης) was a Kushan emperor from around AD 95–127, the son of Sadashkana and the grandson of Kujula Kadphises, and the father of Kanishka I, as detailed by the Rabatak inscription.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Vima Kadphises added to the Kushan territory by his conquests in Bactria. He issued an extensive series of coins and inscriptions. He issued gold coins in addition to the existing copper and silver coinage.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The rule of Kanishka the Great, fourth Kushan king, lasted for about 23 years from c. AD 127. Upon his accession, Kanishka ruled a huge territory (virtually all of northern India), south to Ujjain and Kundina and east beyond Pataliputra, according to the Rabatak inscription:


title: Kushan Empire

text: His territory was administered from two capitals: Purushapura (now Peshawar in northwestern Pakistan) and Mathura, in northern India. He is also credited (along with Raja Dab) for building the massive, ancient Fort at Bathinda (Qila Mubarak), in the modern city of Bathinda, Indian Punjab.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Kushans also had a summer capital in Bagram (then known as Kapisa), where the "Begram Treasure", comprising works of art from Greece to China, has been found. According to the Rabatak inscription, Kanishka was the son of Vima Kadphises, the grandson of Sadashkana, and the great-grandson of Kujula Kadphises. Kanishka's era is now generally accepted to have begun in 127 on the basis of Harry Falk's ground-breaking research. Kanishka's era was used as a calendar reference by the Kushans for about a century, until the decline of the Kushan realm.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Huvishka (Kushan: Οοηϸκι, "Ooishki") was a Kushan emperor from the death of Kanishka (assumed on the best evidence available to be in 150) until the succession of Vasudeva I about thirty years later. His rule was a period of retrenchment and consolidation for the Empire. In particular he devoted time and effort early in his reign to the exertion of greater control over the city of Mathura.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Vasudeva I (Kushan: Βαζοδηο "Bazodeo", Chinese: 波調 "Bodiao") was the last of the "Great Kushans". Named inscriptions dating from year 64 to 98 of Kanishka's era suggest his reign extended from at least AD 191 to 225. He was the last great Kushan emperor, and the end of his rule coincides with the invasion of the Sasanians as far as northwestern India, and the establishment of the Indo-Sasanians or "Kushanshahs" in what is nowadays Afghanistan, Pakistan and northwestern India from around AD 240.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Vāsishka was a Kushan emperor who seems to have had a 20-year reign following Kanishka II. His rule is recorded at Mathura, in Gandhara and as far south as Sanchi (near Vidisa), where several inscriptions in his name have been found, dated to the year 22 (the Sanchi inscription of "Vaksushana" – i.e., Vasishka Kushana) and year 28 (the Sanchi inscription of Vasaska – i.e., Vasishka) of a possible second Kanishka era.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Following territory losses in the west (Bactria lost to the Kushano-Sasanians), and in the east (loss of Mathura to the Gupta Empire), several "Little Kushans" are known, who ruled locally in the area of Punjab with their capital at Taxila: Vasudeva II (270 – 300), Mahi (300 – 305), Shaka (305 – 335) and Kipunada (335 – 350). They probably were vassals of the Gupta Empire, until the invasion of the Kidarites destroyed the last remains of Kushan rule.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Kushan religious pantheon is extremely varied, as revealed by their coins that were made in gold, silver, and copper. These coins contained more than thirty different gods, belonging mainly to their own Iranian, as well as Greek and Indian worlds as well. Kushan coins had images of Kushan Kings, Buddha, and figures from the Indo-Aryan and Iranian pantheons. Greek deities, with Greek names are represented on early coins. During Kanishka's reign, the language of the coinage changes to Bactrian (though it remained in Greek script for all kings). After Huvishka, only two divinities appear on the coins: "Ardoxsho" and "Oesho" (see details below).


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Kushans inherited the Greco-Buddhist traditions of the Indo-Greek Kingdom they replaced, and their patronage of Buddhist institutions allowed them to grow as a commercial power. Between the mid-1st century and the mid-3rd century, Buddhism, patronized by the Kushans, extended to China and other Asian countries through the Silk Road.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Kanishka is renowned in Buddhist tradition for having convened a great Buddhist council in Kashmir. Along with his predecessors in the region, the Indo-Greek king Menander I (Milinda) and the Indian emperors Ashoka and Harsha Vardhana, Kanishka is considered by Buddhism as one of its greatest benefactors.


title: Kushan Empire

text: During the 1st century AD, Buddhist books were being produced and carried by monks, and their trader patrons. Also, monasteries were being established along these land routes that went from China and other parts of Asia. With the development of Buddhist books, it caused a new written language called Gandhara. Gandhara consists of eastern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan. Scholars are said to have found many Buddhist scrolls that contained the Gandhari language.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The reign of Huvishka corresponds to the first known epigraphic evidence of the Buddha Amitabha, on the bottom part of a 2nd-century statue which has been found in Govindo-Nagar, and now at the Mathura Museum. The statue is dated to "the 28th year of the reign of Huvishka", and dedicated to "Amitabha Buddha" by a family of merchants. There is also some evidence that Huvishka himself was a follower of Mahayana Buddhism. A Sanskrit manuscript fragment in the Schøyen Collection describes Huvishka as one who has "set forth in the Mahāyāna."


title: Kushan Empire

text: The 12th century historical chronicle "Rajatarangini" mentions in detail the rule of the Kushan kings and their benevolence towards Buddhism:


title: Kushan Empire

text: The art and culture of Gandhara, at the crossroads of the Kushan hegemony, developed the traditions of Greco-Buddhist art and are the best known expressions of Kushan influences to Westerners. Several direct depictions of Kushans are known from Gandhara, where they are represented with a tunic, belt and trousers and play the role of devotees to the Buddha, as well as the Bodhisattva and future Buddha Maitreya.


title: Kushan Empire

text: According to Benjamin Rowland, the first expression of Kushan art appears at Khalchayan at the end of the 2nd century BC. It is derived from Hellenistic art, and possibly from the art of the cities of Ai-Khanoum and Nysa, and clearly has similarities with the later Art of Gandhara, and may even have been at the origin of its development. Rowland particularly draws attention to the similarity of the ethnic types represented at Khalchayan and in the art of Gandhara, and also in the style of portraiture itself. For example, Rowland find a great proximity between from Khalchayan, and the head of Gandharan Bodhisattvas, giving the example of the Gandharan head of a Bodhisattva in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The similarity of the Gandhara Bodhisattva with the portrait of the Kushan ruler Heraios is also striking. According to Rowland the Bactrian art of Khalchayan thus survived for several centuries through its influence in the art of Gandhara, thanks to the patronage of the Kushans.


title: Kushan Empire

text: During the Kushan Empire, many images of Gandhara share a strong resemblance to the features of Greek, Syrian, Persian and Indian figures. These Western-looking stylistic signatures often include heavy drapery and curly hair, representing a composite (the Greeks, for example, often possessed curly hair).


title: Kushan Empire

text: As the Kushans took control of the area of Mathura as well, the Art of Mathura developed considerably, and free-standing statues of the Buddha came to be mass-produced around this time, possibly encouraged by doctrinal changes in Buddhism allowing to depart from the aniconism that had prevailed in the Buddhist sculptures at Mathura, Bharhut or Sanchi from the end of the 2nd century BC. The artistic cultural influence of kushans declined slowly due to Hellenistic Greek and Indian influences.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Kushans used gold ingots as part of their monetary system, as shown by the gold treasure discovered in 1972 in Dalverzin Tepe. The main objects from the treasure were circular and parallelepipedic ingots, followed by various decorative objects and jewelry items. The circular ingots used to be progressively cut up as needed, depending on the amount required for a transaction. On the contrary, the parallelepipedic ingots were used to stock wealth in a not-divisible form; these ingots bear inscriptions in Kharoshthi mentioning their weight and the god Mitra (protector of contractuel relations) These ingots are all ttributed to the monetary system of the Kushan Empire.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The coinage of the Kushans was abundant and an important tool of propaganda in promoting each Kushan ruler. One of the names for Kushan coins was "Dinara", which ultimately came from the Roman name "Denarius aureus". The coinage of the Kushans was copied as far as the Kushano-Sasanians in the west, and the kingdom of Samatata in Bengal to the east. The coinage of the Gupta Empire was also initially derived from the coinage of the Kushan Empire, adopting its weight standard, techniques and designs, following the conquests of Samudragupta in the northwest. The imagery on Gupta coins then became more Indian in both style and subject matter compared to earlier dynasties, where Greco-Roman and Persian styles were mostly followed.


title: Kushan Empire

text: It has long been suggested that the gold contained in Kushan coins was ultimately of Roman origin, and that Roman coins were imported as a consequence of trade and melted in India to mint Kushan coins. However, a recent archaeometallurgical study of trace elements through proton activation analysis has shown that Kushan gold contains high concentrations of platinum and palladium, which rules out the hypothesis of a Roman provenance. To this day, the origin of Kushan gold remains unknown.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Several Roman sources describe the visit of ambassadors from the Kings of Bactria and India during the 2nd century, probably referring to the Kushans.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Also in 138, according to Aurelius Victor ("Epitome"‚ XV, 4), and Appian ("Praef.", 7), Antoninus Pius, successor to Hadrian, received some Indian, Bactrian, and Hyrcanian ambassadors.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Some Kushan coins have an effigy of "Roma", suggesting a strong level of awareness and some level of diplomatic relations.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The summer capital of the Kushan Empire in Begram has yielded a considerable amount of goods imported from the Roman Empire—in particular, various types of glassware. The Chinese described the presence of Roman goods in the Kushan realm:


title: Kushan Empire

text: Parthamaspates of Parthia, a client of Rome and ruler of the kingdom of Osroene, is known to have traded with the Kushan Empire, goods being sent by sea and through the Indus River.


title: Kushan Empire

text: During the 1st and 2nd century AD, the Kushan Empire expanded militarily to the north, putting them at the center of the profitable Central Asian commerce. They are related to have collaborated militarily with the Chinese against nomadic incursion, particularly when they allied with the Han dynasty general Ban Chao against the Sogdians in 84, when the latter were trying to support a revolt by the king of Kashgar. Around 85, they also assisted the Chinese general in an attack on Turpan, east of the Tarim Basin.


title: Kushan Empire

text: In recognition for their support to the Chinese, the Kushans requested a Han princess, but were denied, even after they had sent presents to the Chinese court. In retaliation, they marched on Ban Chao in 86 with a force of 70,000, but were defeated by a smaller Chinese force. The Yuezhi retreated and paid tribute to the Chinese Empire during the reign of emperor He of Han (89–106).


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Kushans are again recorded to have sent presents to the Chinese court in 158–159 during the reign of Emperor Huan of Han.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Following these interactions, cultural exchanges further increased, and Kushan Buddhist missionaries, such as Lokaksema, became active in the Chinese capital cities of Luoyang and sometimes Nanjing, where they particularly distinguished themselves by their translation work. They were the first recorded promoters of Hinayana and Mahayana scriptures in China, greatly contributing to the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism.


title: Kushan Empire

text: After the death of Vasudeva I in 225, the Kushan empire split into western and eastern halves. The Western Kushans (in Afghanistan) were soon subjugated by the Persian Sasanian Empire and lost Sogdiana, Bactria, and Gandhara to them. The Sassanian king Shapur I (240–270) claims in his Naqsh-e Rostam inscription possession of the territory of the Kushans (Kūšān šahr) as far as "Purushapura" (Peshawar), suggesting he controlled Bactria and areas as far as the Hindu-Kush or even south of it:


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Sasanians deposed the Western dynasty and replaced them with Persian vassals known as the Kushanshas (in Bactrian on their coinage: KΟÞANΟ ÞAΟ "Koshano Shao") also called Indo-Sasanians or Kushano-Sasanians. The Kushano-Sasanians ultimately became very powerful under Hormizd I Kushanshah (277–286) and rebelled against the Sasanian Empire, while continuing many aspects of the Kushan culture, visible in particular in their titulature and their coinage.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The Eastern Kushan kingdom, also known as the "Little Kushans", was based in the Punjab. Around 270 their territories on the Gangetic plain became independent under local dynasties such as the Yaudheyas. Then in the mid-4th century they were subjugated by the Gupta Empire under Samudragupta. In his inscription on the Allahabad pillar Samudragupta proclaims that the "Dēvaputra-Shāhi-Shāhānushāhi" (referring to the last Kushan rulers, being a deformation of the Kushan regnal titles "Devaputra", "Shao" and "Shaonanoshao": "Son of God, King, King of Kings") are now under his dominion, and that they were forced to "self-surrender, offering (their own) daughters in marriage and a request for the administration of their own districts and provinces". This suggests that by the time of the Allahabad inscription the Kushans still ruled in Punjab, but under the suzerainty of the Gupta Emperor.


title: Kushan Empire

text: Numimastics indicate that the coinage of the Eastern Kushans was much weakened: silver coinage was abandoned altogether, and gold coinage was debased. This suggests that the Eastern Kushans had lost their central trading role on the trade routes that supplied luxury goods and gold. Still, the Buddhist art of Gandhara continued to flourish, and cities such as Sirsukh near Taxila were established.


title: Kushan Empire

text: In the east around 350, Shapur II regained the upper hand against the Kushano-Sasanian Kingdom and took control of large territories in areas now known as Afghanistan and Pakistan, possibly as a consequence of the destruction of the Kushano-Sasanians by the Chionites. The Kushano-Sasanian still ruled in the north. Important finds of Sasanian coinage beyond the Indus river in the city of Taxila only start with the reigns of Shapur II (r.309-379) and Shapur III (r.383-388), suggesting that the expansion of Sasanian control beyond the Indus was the result of the wars of Shapur II "with the Chionites and Kushans" in 350-358 as described by Ammianus Marcellinus. They probably maintained control until the rise of the Kidarites under their ruler Kidara.


title: Kushan Empire

text: In 360 a Kidarite Hun named Kidara overthrew the Kushano-Sasanians and remnants of the old Kushan dynasty, and established the Kidarite Kingdom. The Kushan style of Kidarite coins indicates they claimed Kushan heritage. The Kidarite seem to have been rather prosperous, although on a smaller scale than their Kushan predecessors. East of the Punjab, the former eastern territories of the Kushans were controlled by the mighty Gupta Empire.


title: Kushan Empire

text: The remnants of Kushan culture under the Kidarites in the northwest were ultimately wiped out in the end of the 5th century by the invasions of the Alchon Huns (sometimes considered as a branch of the Hephthalites), and later the Nezak Huns.


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: "The Yellow Wallpaper" (original title: "The Yellow Wall-paper. A Story") is a short story by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in "The New England Magazine". It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature for its illustration of the attitudes towards mental and physical health of women in the 19th century.


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: Narrated in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband has rented an old mansion for the summer. Forgoing other rooms in the house, the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, the husband forbids the unnamed woman from working or writing and encourages her to eat well and get plenty of air so that she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency", a common diagnosis in women at the time.


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: The story describes a young woman and her husband. He imposes a rest cure on her when she suffers "temporary nervous depression" after the birth of their baby. They spend the summer at a colonial mansion, where the narrator is largely confined to an upstairs nursery. The story makes striking use of an unreliable narrator in order to gradually reveal the degree to which her husband has "imprisoned" her due to her physical and mental condition: she describes torn wallpaper, barred windows, metal rings in the walls, a floor "scratched and gouged and splintered," a bed bolted to the floor, and a gate at the top of the stairs, but blames all these on children who must have resided there.


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: The narrator devotes many journal entries to describing the wallpaper in the room – its "sickly" color, its "yellow" smell, its bizarre and disturbing pattern like "an interminable string of toadstools, budding and sprouting in endless convolutions," its missing patches, and the way it leaves yellow smears on the skin and clothing of anyone who touches it. She describes how the longer one stays in the bedroom, the more the wallpaper appears to mutate, especially in the moonlight. With no stimulus other than the wallpaper, the pattern and designs become increasingly intriguing to the narrator. She soon begins to see a figure in the design. Eventually, she comes to believe that a woman is creeping on all fours behind the pattern. Believing she must free the woman in the wallpaper, she begins to strip the remaining paper off the wall.


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: When her husband arrives home, the narrator refuses to unlock her door. When he returns with the key, he finds her creeping around the room, rubbing against the wallpaper, and exclaiming, "I've got out at last... in spite of you." He faints, but she continues to circle the room, creeping over his inert body each time she passes it, believing herself to have become the woman trapped behind the yellow wallpaper.


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: Gilman used her writing to explore the role of women in America around 1900. She expanded upon many issues, such as the lack of a life outside the home and the "oppressive forces" of a "patriarchal society". Through her work, Gilman paved the way for writers such as Alice Walker and Sylvia Plath.


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: In "The Yellow Wallpaper," she portrays the narrator's insanity as a way to protest the professional and societal oppression against women. While under the impression that husbands and male doctors were acting with their best interests in mind, women were depicted as mentally fragile. Women’s rights advocates of the era believed that the "outbreak" of this mental instability was the manifestation of their setbacks regarding the roles they were allowed to play in a male-dominated society. Women were even discouraged from writing because it would ultimately create an identity and become a form of defiance. Gilman realized that writing became one of the only forms of existence for women at a time when they had very few rights.


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: After the birth of her first daughter, Gilman suffered postnatal depression and was treated by Dr. Silas Weir Mitchell, the leading expert on women's mental health at the time. He suggested a strict 'rest cure' regimen involving much of bed rest and a blanket ban on working, including reading, writing, and painting. After three months and almost desperate, Gilman decided to contravene her diagnosis, along with the treatment methods, and started to work again. Aware of how close she had come to a complete mental breakdown, the author wrote ”The Yellow Wallpaper” with additions and exaggerations to illustrate her criticism of the medical field. Gilman sent a copy to Mitchell but never received a response. (Gilman was ultimately proven right in her disdain for the "rest cure" when she sought a second opinion from Mary Putnam Jacobi, one of the first female doctors and a strong opponent of this theory, who prescribed a regimen of physical and mental activity that proved a much more successful treatment.)


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: She added that "The Yellow Wallpaper" was "not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked". Gilman claimed that many years later, she learned that Mitchell had changed his treatment methods. However, literary historian Julie Bates Dock has discredited this. Mitchell continued his methods, and as late as 1908 – 16 years after "The Yellow Wallpaper" was published – was interested in creating entire hospitals devoted to the "rest cure" so that his treatments would be more widely accessible. Gilman gives her greatest thanks to Richard Bauer for being the only man who believed in her.


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: This story has been interpreted by feminist critics as a condemnation of the male control of the 19th-century medical profession. Throughout the short story, the narrator offers many suggestions to help her get better, such as exercising, working, or socializing with the outside world. Her ideas are dismissed immediately while using language that stereotypes her as irrational and, therefore, unqualified to offer ideas about her condition. This interpretation draws on the concept of the "domestic sphere" that women were held in during this period.


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: Many feminist critics focus on the degree of triumph at the end of the story. Although some claim the narrator slipped into insanity, others see the ending as a woman's assertion of agency in a marriage in which she felt trapped. The emphasis on reading and writing as gendered practices also illustrated the importance of the wallpaper. If the narrator were allowed neither to write in her journal nor to read, she would begin to "read" the wallpaper until she found the escape she was looking for. Through seeing the women in the wallpaper, the narrator realizes that she could not live her life locked up behind bars. At the end of the story, as her husband lies on the floor unconscious, she crawls over him, symbolically rising over him. This is interpreted as a victory over her husband at the expense of her sanity.


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: In her article "Feminist Criticism 'The Yellow Wallpaper', and the Politics of Color in America", Susan S. Lanser, a professor at Brandeis University, praises contemporary feminism and its role in changing the study and the interpretation of literature. "The Yellow Wallpaper" was one of many stories that lost authority in the literary world because of an ideology that determined the works' content to be disturbing or offensive. Critics such as the editor of the "Atlantic Monthly" rejected the short story because "[he] could not forgive [himself] if [he] made others as miserable as [he] made [himself]". Lanser argues that the same argument of devastation and misery can be said about the work of Edgar Allan Poe, but his work is still printed and studied by academics.


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: "The Yellow Wallpaper" provided feminists the tools to interpret literature in different ways. Lanser argues that the short story was a "particularly congenial medium for such a re-vision... because the narrator herself engages in a form of feminist interpretation when she tries to read the paper on her wall". The narrator in the story is trying to find a single meaning in the wallpaper. At first, she focuses on the contradictory style of the wallpaper: it is "flamboyant" while also "dull", "pronounced," yet "lame," and "uncertain" (p. 13). She takes into account the patterns and tries to organize them geometrically, but she is further confused. The wallpaper changes colors when it reflects light and emits a distinct odor that the protagonist cannot recognize (p. 25). At night the narrator can see a woman behind bars within the complex design of the wallpaper. Lanser argues that the unnamed woman was able to find "a space of text on which she can locate whatever self-projection". Just like the narrator as a reader, when one comes into contact with a confusing and complicated text, one tries to find a single meaning. "How we were taught to read," as Lanser puts it, is why a reader cannot fully comprehend the text. The patriarchal ideology had kept many scholars from being able to interpret and appreciate stories such as "The Yellow Wallpaper". With the growth of feminist criticism, "The Yellow Wallpaper" has become a fundamental reading in the standard curriculum. Feminists have made a significant contribution to the study of literature but, according to Lanser, are falling short because if "we acknowledge the participation of women writers and readers in dominant patterns of thought and social practice then perhaps our own patterns must also be deconstructed if we are to recover meanings still hidden or overlooked."


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: Martha J. Cutter discusses how, in many of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's works, she addresses this "struggle in which a male-dominated medical establishment attempts to silence women". Gilman's works challenge the social construction of women in patriarchal medical discourse who are seen as "silent, powerless, and passive". At the time in which her works take place, between 1840 and 1890, women were exceedingly defined as lesser than—sickly and weak. In this time period it was thought that women who received formal education (amongst other causes) could develop hysteria, a now-discredited catchall term referring to most mental health diseases identified in women and erroneously believed to stem from a malfunctioning uterus (from the Greek "hystera", "womb"). At the time, the medical understanding was that women who spent time in college or studying were over-stimulating their brains and consequently leading themselves into states of hysteria. Many of the diseases recognized in women were seen as a lack of self-control or self-rule. Different physicians argued that a physician must "assume a tone of authority" and that the idea of a "cured" woman is "subdued, docile, silent, and above all subject to the will and voice of the physician". A hysterical woman craves power. To be treated for her hysteria, she must submit to her physician, whose role is to undermine her desires. Often women were prescribed bed rest as a form of treatment, which was meant to "tame" them and keep them imprisoned. Treatments such as this were a way of ridding women of rebelliousness and forcing them to conform to expected social roles. In her works, Gilman highlights that the harm caused by these types of treatments for women, i.e., "the rest cure", has to do with how her voice is silenced. Paula Treichler explains: "In this story diagnosis 'is powerful and public... It is a male voice that... imposes controls on the female narrator and dictates how she is to perceive and talk about the world.' Diagnosis covertly functions to empower the male physician's voice and disempower the female patient's." The narrator in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is not allowed to participate in her treatment or diagnosis and is completely forced to succumb to everything in which her doctor and in this particular story, her husband, says. The male voice is the one in which forces controls on the female and decides how she is allowed to perceive and speak about the world around her.


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: "The Yellow Wallpaper" is sometimes cited as an example of Gothic literature for its themes of madness and powerlessness. Alan Ryan, for example, introduced the story by writing: "quite apart from its origins [it] is one of the finest, and strongest, tales of horror ever written. It may be a ghost story. Worse yet, it may not." Pioneering horror author H. P. Lovecraft writes in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1927) that "'The Yellow Wall Paper' rises to a classic level in subtly delineating the madness which crawls over a woman dwelling in the hideously papered room where a madwoman was once confined".


title: The Yellow Wallpaper

text: Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, in her book "Wild Unrest: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Making of "The Yellow Wall-Paper"", concludes that "the story was a "cri de coeur" against Gilman's first husband, artist Charles Walter Stetson and the traditional marriage he had demanded." Gilman attempted to deflect blame to protect Gilman's daughter Katharine and her step-mother, Gilman's friend Grace Channing. Horowitz consults the sources of Charlotte's private life, including her daily journals, drafts of poems and essays, and intimate letters, and compares them to the diary accounts of her first husband. She also mines Charlotte's diaries for notes on her reading. She shows how specific poetry, fiction, and popular science shaped her consciousness and understanding of sex and gender, health and illness, emotion and intellect. As a result, Horowitz makes some bold and compelling arguments. She builds a strong case to show that "The Yellow Wall-Paper", in its original form, did not represent a literal protest against Mitchell (a neurologist who treated Gilman in 1887) and his treatment. Rather it emerged from Charlotte's troubled relationship with her husband Walter, personified in the story's physician. In demanding a traditional wife, Walter denied Charlotte personal freedom, squelched her intellectual energy, and characterized her illness.