The assault on Holocaust memory and history: Holocaust denial and the Leuchter Report
Channel: Recording Archaeology
Date: 22/01/2021

In the mid-1980s Fred Leuchter illegally excavated samples from the remains of the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Majdanek and compiled a report for the trial of known Holocaust denier Ernst Zündel. The report denied the possibility of gassing human beings in the structures and the historical reality of the Holocaust. The report was shown to be completely false and the academic credentials of Leuchter lacking. Still, the report has been used by a large number of Holocaust deniers to cast doubt on the reality of the Holocaust. A survey released in January 2019 suggested that one in twenty people in the United Kingdom did not believe the Holocaust had taken place. This paper will explore how historians, archaeologists and academics can intervene to prevent the mendacious narratives of deniers’ thorough public engagement. It will suggest that the answer lies not in countering the antisemitic narratives of deniers (as such a method meets deniers on their terms), but exposing how their methods of denial centre on public discourses and popular representations of the Holocaust rather than the more complex and detailed history of the academy. I will argue that this approach will not only expose the inherently genocidal nature of Holocaust denial but also help to expand public knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust.

MARK HOBBS, UNIVERSITY OF EAST ANGLIA