Holocaust(s) Denial

It seems that Iran and Ahmadinejad have company.

The WMET Talk Back Blog has a post about a contentious issue facing PBS:

PBS aired a documentary covering the unknown holocaust: the genocide of Armenians by the Turks in the early 20th century. Despite a lack of recognition for their suffering, estimates as high as 2 million Armenains were killed during this extermination period. The documentary was fine except that to give the ‘other side of the story’ they interviewed Turkish holocaust deniers much to the chagrin of Armenians and other sane human beings:

Armenian Americans have publicized an online petition that asks PBS to drop the discussion program. As of last night, more than 6,000 people had electronically added their names to the petition, making it one of the largest organized protests of a PBS program. “We strongly feel that debating the Armenian Genocide is akin to arguing about the Jewish Holocaust in order to project a sense of balance,” the petition reads. “Would PBS ever contemplate such a program?” Noting that the film already includes Turkish denials, the petition concludes that the panel discussion “would serve to emphasize the Turkish state’s official position and undermine the non-political nature of [PBS] programming.”

The argument the Turkish government gives to the death of these Armenians is comparable to the argument given by those who admit that large numbers of Jews died during WWII--but deny it happened at the hands of the Germans and the number of victims.

Successors to the Ottoman Turks have acknowledged that there were a substantial number of Armenian deaths -- Turkish estimates range from 300,000 to 600,000 -- but Turkey maintains that the deaths resulted from warfare, starvation and epidemics that affected all segments of Turkish society.

PBS itself admits that offering contrary views is rarely done on their shows:

Atlas acknowledged that such an approach is rare for PBS and said that the Alexandria-based service has not had other panels to discuss opposing views of documentaries during her five-year tenure. She declined to say whether a documentary about the Holocaust or about the genocides in Rwanda or Cambodia would require a similar post-documentary discussion. "Those are hypothetical questions," she said.

Besides Armenia, Rwanda and Cambodia, another case of genocide--not mentioned in the article--is Nanking. In Denying History, Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman write:

Nanking was only one of many atrocities committed by the Japanese between 1931 and 1945, in what Iris Chang has called "the forgotten holocaust of World War II," the subtitle of her disturbing book The Rape of Nanking...As in the Nazi mass murder of the Jews, totals of the numbers killed vary, ranging from 1,578,000 to 6, 325,000, with a mid-range moderate estimate of 3,949,000 people exterminated as a direct result of Japanese crimes against humanity (i.e., noncombatants). When total Chinese deaths are calibrated to include Japanese military actions through looting, starvation, bombing, medical experimentation, and battle deaths, historians estimate that the figure may be as high as 19 million...the Nazis did not hold a monopoly on human cruelty. There seems nothing the Nazis did to Jews that would have shocked their Japanese counterparts. (p.232)

Then, as in the case of the Holocaust, Armenia, Rwanda, Cambodia--comes the denial:

It is significant that the Rape of Nanking was front-page news around the world, not just on the fringe and alternative press but in such august publications as the New York times. This "second rape" of denial, as Chang calls it, began at the top and worked its way down. The denial of atrocities on the part of the Japanese government has resulted in historical interpretations of the Rape of Nanking ranging from declarations that it involved only the isolated acts of a few out-of-control soldiers to flat-out denial that it even happened. One leading member of Japan's conservative Liberal Democratic Party, Ishihara Shintaro, for example, told Playboy magazine in a 1990 interview "People say that the Japanese made a holocaust there [in Nanking], but that is not true. It is a story made up by the Chinese. It has tarnished the image of Japan, but it is a lie."

...In a clear example of official denial (one that echoes the Holocaust deniers in their techniques and arguments), the Japanese minister of education, Fujio Masayuki, told Bungei Shunju magazine in 1986 that the Rape of Nanking was “just a part of war,” that the numbers killed had been highly exaggerated, and that the Tokyo War Crimes Trial was nothing more than “racial revenge” intended to “rob Japan of her power.” (p. 233-234)

If one wanted to, one could argue about the Holocaust, about whether the Jews went like sheep to slaughter or fought back, about what the Allies could have done, about what Jews in other countries could have and did in fact do. And of course one could argue about whether the Holocaust was a unique atrocity in history.

But what is not unique is the way you can always count on there being people who will rationalize, excuse, deny and attempt to erase out of the history books those unspeakable atrocities that must be faced and examined so that "Never Again" becomes a fact and not a slogan.

See also Iran and The Part It Played During the Holocaust

Technorati Tag: Holocaust and Armenia and Iran and Ahmadinejad.