Jewish
Jurists Fight Holocaust Denial GOVERNMENTS
must
outlaw Holocaust revisionism in order to
fight a hi-tech, well-financed movement
that denies the Holocaust ever occurred, a
group of Jewish legal experts said
yesterday [August 2,
1998]. An international
conference of Jewish jurists, held in the
northern Greek city of Thessaloniki,
warned that the international revisionist
movement, using the Internet and an
orchestrated propaganda campaign, could
warp the historical memory of younger
generations. The denial movement
has a historical
institute which is reviewing
history and
whose real aim is to deny the Holocaust,
said Itzhak Nener, an Israeli who
is deputy president of the International
Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists.
"They have tremendous sums of
money." The Nazis murdered
50,000 of Thessaloniki's Jews during the
Holocaust, destroying the once-thriving
community. 
| 2. Today, about 1,000
Jews live in the city. During World War
II, Nazi Germany rounded up about six
million Jews and exterminated them at
death camps. One aim of the
conference is to convince more countries
to pass legislation outlawing Holocaust
denial. Several European countries,
including Germany, Austria, Switzerland,
France and Luxembourg already have such
legislation. But Nener and his colleagues
said the relevant punishment was too
lenient, and more countries should crack
down on people claiming the Nazi slaughter
of Jews never took place. Holocaust
revisionists have been consistently active
in the US and Canada, where they have
aired their views on the Internet. "This
growing group is using websites to make
amazingly ridiculous claims, like that
they measured the gas chambers and found
they were not big enough for people,"
said Isidor Wolfe, a lawyer from
Vancouver, Canada. The International
Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists
will hold conferences in more than 20
other European nations to lobby for more
anti-revisionism laws. |
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