Timelines of Holocaust historiography and revisionism

These timelines of Holocaust historiography and revisionism list notable dates in the establishment of the orthodox historiography of the Holocaust and in Holocaust revisionism.

Timeline of the establishment of the orthodox historiography according to Holocaust revisionists

This is not a timeline of what did or did not happen during the Holocaust itself but a timeline of how the politically correct Holocaust version was established as argued by Holocaust revisionists.

Regarding general revisionist arguments on why and how the politically correct Holocaust version was created and have persisted, see the articles on Holocaust motivations and Holocaust testimonial evidence. See also Allied psychological warfare.

• Claims of six million suffering, dying, or dead Jews appeared long before the start of WWII and was claimed during and after WWII before any "official" numbers appeared.

• During the Second Boer War (1899 - 1902) the British used "concentration camps" in order to concentrate the Boer civilian population and prevent it from helping the Boer forces.

• During World War I (1914 - 1918) Allied propaganda falsely claimed large scale German atrocities. The Allies won the war, blamed Germany for starting it, and imposed harsh peace treaties. But Germany was never occupied and the Allies were unable to convince most Germans of their guilt with resulting widespread resentment. Avoiding a repetition of this after World War II may have been seen as very important. Another effect of WWI was that the use of poison gas during the war caused widespread fears and may have contributed to later using gas in atrocity propaganda.

• Beginning in 1917, after the Communist coup, the Communist Soviet Union started to massively censor and falsify history using a wide variety of methods including fabricating/editing photographs and documents, propaganda films, as well as using elaborate show trials with numerous "testimonies" and "confessions" in order to publicly discredit and condemn opponents.

• Beginning in 1933, National Socialist Germany started using concentration camps. See The Holocaust: Argued reasons for the camps and deportations.

• Beginning in 1941, after the start of the war with National Socialist Germany, the Communist Soviet Union started spreading stories of German mass killings. One example is the alleged use of gas vans by the Einsatzgruppen. The Soviets also started conducting war crimes tribunals.

• Beginning in 1941, the Communist influenced Auschwitz resistance (led by Communists such as Bruno Baum and Hermann Langbein) started spreading stories of German mass killings. "But the pesticide Zyklon B was initially not mentioned; instead, in constantly changing manner, the killings were said to being committed by means of “electrical baths”, combat gases and a “pneumatic hammer.”" Bruno Baum has even stated that: “The whole propaganda which started about Auschwitz abroad was initiated by us with the help of our Polish comrades.” “It is no exaggeration when I say that the majority of all Auschwitz propaganda, which was spread at that time all over the world, was written by ourselves in the camp.” “We carried out this propaganda in [for] the world public until our very last day of presence in Auschwitz."

• The "Polish comrades" may refer to Polish partisans such as Jan Karski who around this time started spreading stories of German atrocities.

• 1942 - Zionist organizations such as the World Jewish Congress started spreading stories of German mass killings.

• 1942 - The Allies issued a "Joint Declaration by Members of the United Nations Against Extermination of the Jews".

• 1944 - Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escaped Auschwitz and produced the Vrba-Wetzler report which, according to revisionists, heavily influenced many subsequent versions off what happened at Auschwitz. In November 1944, this report was the first to be officially sanctioned by the U.S. government in the form of a 1944 report by the War Refugee Board.

• 1944 - the Soviets reached the Majdanek camp which was used for large scale propaganda purposes as a claimed "extermination camp".

• 1945 - the Soviets reached the Auschwitz camp which was again used for large scale propaganda purposes as a claimed "extermination camp". "Even after the liberation of the camp by the Red Army, a Soviet-Jewish war correspondent published a report on an “electric conveyor belt” upon which inmates were killed with “electrical current.” The version in which Zyklon B became the murder weapon only became current during the following months."

• 1945 - Various reports issued by Soviet and later Communist Polish commissions with access to the eastern Holocaust camps in the territories now under Communist control provided "official" reports on what had happened in these camps. They were accepted as valid evidence at Nuremberg trials. Various claims by these commissions have later been rejected even by non-revisionists such as the use of steam for mass killings, Germany committing the Katyn massacre, four million deaths at Auschwitz, and Finland having put the whole Soviet population of occupied territories into camps where 40% died.

• 1945 - The western Holocaust camps were reached by American and British forces. Photographs and movies showing scenes due to starvation and epidemics were widely shown and framed as showing German mass killings. Allied "Psychological Warfare" units are argued to have played important parts in creating this impression.

• 1945 - The first Belsen trial convicted Josef Kramer and others. As Kramer had been an Auschwitz commander the trial also "confirmed" Auschwitz as an "extermination camp".

• 1945 - Kurt Gerstein allegedly wrote the Gerstein Report before his death. It was very influential in establishing the politically correct view on several non-Auschwitz camps and in establishing diesel exhaust over competing alleged killing methods such as steam and electricity.

• 1945-1947 - The Dachau trials.

• 1945-1946 - the International Military Tribunal (IMT) which was the first of the Nuremberg trials. It in effect made the politically correct view of the Holocaust an official truth that could not be questioned in the later Nuremberg trials: "The determination of the International Military Tribunal in the judgments […] that invasions, aggressive acts, aggressive wars, crimes, atrocities or inhumane acts were planned or occurred, shall be binding on the tribunals established hereunder and shall not be questioned except insofar as the participation therein or knowledge thereof by any particular person may be concerned. Statements of the International Military Tribunal in the judgment […] constitute proof of the facts stated, in the absence of substantial new evidence to the contrary."

• 1946-1949 - the Nuremberg Military Tribunals (NMTs).

• 1947 - Auschwitz trials in Communist Poland convicted Rudolf Höss and others. Höss allegedly wrote his memoirs before his death.

• 1949 - West Germany established. "The basic treaty establishing the partial sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany decreed that the verdicts of the IMT were final and binding for all official and judicial authorities of the Federal Republic... the Allies effectively placed the view of history resulting from their post-war judicial conclusions and verdicts beyond revision even for German courts."

• 1952 - The International Auschwitz Committee is created with the Communist and Auschwitz resistance leader Hermann Langbein as General Secretary.

• 1958-63 - the Auschwitz Museum published the "Calendar of Events in Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp".

• 1960 - claims of mass gassings in the western Holocaust camps (such as Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald) are gradually abandoned or modified by orthodox historiography.

• 1961 - the Eichmann trial which was very widely reported on by the mass media.

• 1963-1965 - the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials in West Germany of former Auschwitz personnel.

• 1970 - the discovery of the October 6 Posen speech text.

• 1981 - Israel outlawed "Holocaust denial". This is gradually followed by "Holocaust denial" laws in a large number of Western countries.

• 1989 - the fall of Communism. Orthodox historiography by, for example, the Auschwitz Museum is substantially changed.

• 1989 - the publication of the first book by Jean-Claude Pressac. Many later orthodox works are by revisionists argued to be largely based on Pressac's writings, although often without acknowledging the source.

Timeline of Holocaust revisionism

Timeline of Holocaust revisionism. It will not attempt to judge which individual revisionist books and articles are the most important or list them.

• 1948 - the "father of Holocaust Revisionism", the Frenchman Paul Rassinier, published his first book.

• 1969 - the first Holocaust revisionist book in English is published in the United States. Around this time revisionist books also appear in Germany and England.

• 1979 - the foundation of the Institute for Historical Review.

• 1980-2003 - The Journal of Historical Review

• 1985 - the first of Ernst Zundel's Holocaust trials.

• 1987 - the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) is founded.

• 1988 - the second of Ernst Zundel's Holocaust trials.

• 1989 - the fall of Communism. Some of the archival material in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union are gradually made publicly available. Revisionists have argued that these, such as the Central Construction Office of Auschwitz, add further support for Holocaust revisionism.

• 1994 - the journal The Barnes Review starts.

• 2000 - first book in the Holocaust Handbooks series.

• 2000 - Irving v Penguin Books Limited, Deborah E. Lipstadt.

• 2009 - the journal Inconvenient History starts.

Timeline of convictions for "Holocaust denial"

A 2009 article stated "Aside from widely publicized high profile cases, it is impossible to definitively state the number of innominate victims who have fallen under the punitive arm of Holocaust denial legislation since these laws were first enacted. It has been estimated that over 58,000 individuals in Germany alone have been prosecuted for various thought crimes during the period 1994 – 1999. During the course of one year, [1999], Germany’s aggressive policy of enforcing these repressive laws accounted for 11,248 convictions. Of this number, 8,968 cases were ‘right-wing’ violations, 1,015 were categorized as “leftist,” and the remaining 1,525 cases primarily involved foreigners or other non-German related issues."

Some of the widely publicized high profile cases:

Date	Name	Country where the sentence was pronounced	Sentence
September 1987/June 1999	Jean-Marie Le Pen	France, Germany	fines of €183,000 (1987) and €6,000 (1999)
Feb. 27, 1998	Roger Garaudy	France	6 months imprisonment (suspended), ₣240,000 (€37,500) fine
Jul. 21, 1998	Jürgen Graf	Switzerland	15 months' imprisonment (fled Switzerland to avoid sentence)
Jul. 21, 1998	Gerhard Förster	Switzerland	12 months' imprisonment, disgorgement
April 8, 1999	Fredrick Töben	Australia	7 months' imprisonment Mannheim, Germany - retrial - 2011 indefinitely stayed by judge Dr Meinerzhagen. October 1 - November 19, 2008, London, extradition to Mannheim, Germany, on European Arrest Warrant issued by Germany, failed. August 15 - November 12, 2009, Adelaide, Australia - for contempt of court because he refused to stop questioning the Holocaust's 3 basics: 6 million, systematic state extermination, gas chambers as murder weapon.
May 27, 1999	Jean Plantin	France	6 months' imprisonment (suspended), fine, damages
Apr. 11, 2000	Gaston-Armand Amaudruz	Switzerland	1 year imprisonment, damages
Feb. 20, 2006	David Irving	Austria	3 years imprisonment. Released and deported after serving 13 months.
Mar. 15, 2006	Germar Rudolf	Germany	2½ years' imprisonment
Oct. 3, 2006	Robert Faurisson	France	€7,500 fine, 3 months' probation
Feb. 15, 2007	Ernst Zündel	Germany	5 years' imprisonment
Nov. 8, 2007	Vincent Reynouard	France	1 year imprisonment and a fine of 10,000 euros
Jan. 14, 2008	Wolfgang Fröhlich	Austria	6 years' imprisonment (third offence)
Jan. 15, 2008	Sylvia Stolz	Germany	3½ years' imprisonment
Mar. 11, 2009	Horst Mahler	Germany	5 years' imprisonment
Oct. 23, 2009	Dirk Zimmerman	Germany	9 months' imprisonment
Oct. 27, 2009	Richard Williamson	Germany	€12,000 fine [later overturned]
Jan. 31, 2013	Gyorgy Nagy	Hungary	18-month suspended jail sentence
Feb. 11, 2015	Vincent Reynouard	France	2 years imprisonment

External links

Revisionist views on orthodox historiography

• Auschwitz: A Three-Quarter Century of Propaganda
• The Real Case for Auschwitz—Robert van Pelt’s Evidence from the Irving Trial Critically Reviewed - Part Five: The Origin of the “Convergence of Independent Accounts”
• Auschwitz: The First Gassing—Rumor and Reality

History of Holocaust Revisionism

• Milestones of Revisionism
• A Brief History of Holocaust Revisionism
• IHR: From Flagship to Millstone
• Codoh: About Us
• The Prohibition of Holocaust Denial
• The Victories of Revisionism - Robert Faurisson
• The Victories of Revisionism (continued) - Robert Faurisson
• A Chronicle of Holocaust Revisionism - Thomas Kues

Article archives

• Codoh: Self-perception

Videos

• Buchenwald—A Dumb Dumb Portrayal Of Evil.