The following article was published in the OAH Magazine of History , Vol. Reproduced by permission. A recent survey by the Roper Organization, conducted for the American Jewish Committee , revealed that more than a fifth of all Americans say that it seems possible that the Holocaust never happened.
Historical revisionism is a valid practice.
Holocaust revisionism, however, is based on deliberate fabrications of the historical record and does not reinterpret a past event. The idea that millions of people could have been put to death is an almost incomprehensible idea, particularly for young people. It is for this reason that college students are a special target of the revisionists. For example, in late 1991 and early 1992, Bradley R. Smith placed ads in several campus newspapers asserting that the Holocaust did not happen, causing a media uproar. This generation did not live through World War II, and with each year that passes, fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors remain alive.