Certain revisionist historians have alleged that these events did not take place. They argue that, at most, only a few thousand Jews died and that the majority were evacuated to other countries.

A recent court case in Canada highlighted this controversy. A German immigrant to Canada was prosecuted for “knowingly publishing false information which was likely to cause harm to social or racial tolerance” by denying that the Holocaust ever happened, reported The Globe and Mail of Toronto, Canada. The result was a 15-month jail sentence and a ban on the publication of his revisionist views of the Holocaust.

In West Germany an antidefamation law was amended in 1985 to allow even non-Jewish persons to lay complaint against “anyone who insults, slanders, libels or disparages people who ‘lost their lives as victims of National Socialist or other forms of tyrannic or despotic rule.’” The effect of this law is that it “makes the denial of the murder of Jews in concentration camps during the Nazi dictatorship a punishable offense,” stated the Hamburger Abendblatt.

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Payment for Proof

“A $50,000 reward offered for ‘proof’ that the Nazis gassed Jewish victims in concentration camps must be paid to an Auschwitz survivor under the terms of a court settlement, the survivor’s lawyer said today.

“Judge Robert Wenke of [Los Angeles] Superior Court approved the settlement that calls for the Institute for Historical Review to pay Mel Mermelstein, the Auschwitz survivor. . . .

“The institute, which says the Holocaust never happened, must also pay Mr. Mermelstein $100,000 for the pain and suffering caused by the reward offer, the lawyer said. . . .

“‘Mr. Mermelstein’s victory in this case’ [the lawyer, Gloria Allred, said] ‘will now send a clear message to all those throughout the world who attempt to distort history and inflict misery and suffering on Jews that the survivors of the Holocaust will fight back through the legal system to protect themselves and vindicate the truth about their lives.’”​—The New York Times, July 25, 1985.