17 Winter 2025 v. Austria and Marais v. France, the Court again upheld respective national court decisions that denying the Holocaust amounted to support for genocide.7 In M’Bala M’Bala v. France, the Court held that the defendant was not entitled to plead abuse of freedom of speech, or abuse of rights, when he was convicted of promoting trivialization of the Holocaust in his theatrical presentations.8 In Pastors v. Germany, the Court held that the defendant, a member of his regional parliament, could not claim freedom of speech when he had intentionally stated lies to defame Jews.9 Previously, the deniers and distorters emanated from the Far Right. Now, they come primarily from the Far Left, Islamists, and the careless and the ignorant, following the defeat of David Irving and his civil case against Penguin Books, when any so-called scientific proof of the facts of the Holocaust were destroyed and revealed as nothing more than the promotion of neoNazism.10 Outright denial is therefore now rare, except on the internet. The late Yehuda Bauer noted that outright denial has become a marginal issue in Europe, but that it still exists in America where there is less understanding and knowledge about the War. Holocaust distortion may be pursued to advance antidemocratic political agendas, or to legitimize difficult national histories. This may be via national legislation that absolves the country of responsibility, expressions of public opinion supporting such legal measures, legal decisions that overturn criminal convictions of Nazi collaborators or rhetoric that employs historically inappropriate comparisons. The growth of distortion and trivialization prompted IHRA to adopt its own official definition of Holocaust denial, which, though not legally binding like its definition of antisemitism, has been adopted by its member States. It notes that: The goals of Holocaust denial often are the rehabilitation of an explicit antisemitism and the promotion of political ideologies and conditions suitable for the advent of the very type of event it denies. Distortion of the Holocaust refers, inter alia, to: 1. Intentional efforts to excuse or minimize the impact of the Holocaust or its principal elements, including collaborators and allies of Nazi Germany; 2. Gross minimization of the number of the victims of the Holocaust in contradiction to reliable sources; 3. Attempts to blame the Jews for causing their own genocide; 4. Statements that cast the Holocaust as a positive historical event. Those statements are not Holocaust denial but are closely connected to it as a radical form of antisemitism. They may suggest that the Holocaust did not go far enough in accomplishing its goal of “the Final Solution of the Jewish Question”; 5. Attempts to blur the responsibility for the establishment of concentration and death camps devised and operated by Nazi Germany by putting blame on other nations or ethnic groups.11 Nazi-occupied countries, particularly in the Balkans and former Soviet Bloc states, admit their involvement in the Holocaust. The “Memorial for Victims” in Budapest is officially titled the “Memorial for Victims of the German Occupation.” It depicts Hungary as the Archangel Gabriel being attacked by an eagle meant to symbolize Nazi Germany. But it fails to recognize that almost all the Hungarian citizens who were murdered were Jews. It suggests that Hungarians were innocent victims and fails to recognize that many Hungarians were complicit in rounding up Jews to be transported to the death camps, or that the Hungarian Arrow Cross murdered thousands of Jews on the banks of the Danube.12 7. Gerd Honsik v. Austria, App. No. 25062/94, Eur. Ct. H.R. (1997), available at https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/ tkp197/view.asp?i=001-3494; see also Pierre Marais v. France, App. No. 31159/96, Eur. Ct. H.R. (1996), available at https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/tkp197/view. asp?i=001-88275 8. Dieudonne M’Bala M’Bala v. France, App. No. 25239/13, Eur. Ct. H.R. (2025), available at https://hudoc.echr. coe.int/eng?i=001-160358 9. Pastors v. Germany, App. No. 55225/14, Eur. Ct. H.R. (2020), available at https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/ fre?i=001-196148 10. Irving v. Penguin Books Ltd., Deborah E. Lipstadt [2000] EWHC QB 115 (Eng.) (April 11, 2000), available at https://www.casemine.com/judgement/ uk/5a8ff7de60d03e7f57eb2902 11. “Working definition of Holocaust denial and distortion,” INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE ALLIANCE, available at https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/ working-definition-holocaust-denial-distortion
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