Auschwitz Museum calls on Facebook to ban Holocaust denialism
The platform has refused to label it hate speech.
Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day, which occurs on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp in Poland where 1.1 million people, the vast majority Jewish, were murdered by Nazi Germany. Auschwitz was the Nazi’s largest extermination camp.
In honor of the occasion today, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum is calling on Facebook to ban Holocaust denial on its platform.
This morning, the museum tweeted a link to an editorial in USA Today by American Defamation League CEO and National Director Jonathan A. Greenblatt, “@Facebook should ban #Holocaust denial to mark the 75th anniversary of #Auschwitz liberation.”
'@Facebook should ban #Holocaust denial to mark 75th anniversary of #Auschwitz liberation' https://t.co/vM3JeQ6YJc | @usatoday— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) January 27, 2020
Greenblatt accuses Facebook of knowingly allowing people on its platform to deny the Holocaust, which he equates with anti-Semitism.
Facebook, he writes, has chosen to view Holocaust denial as mere “misinformation,” rather than hate speech, and thus, in spite of public pressure, refused to ban it.
Others echoed Greenblatt’s criticisms, though some opined that banning such speech on the platform would merely drive it underground.
MotherZucker only cares about imprints and information to sell. His ethics are as situational as a chameleon’s skin colour. He’s the Robo-Trudeau of silicone valley.— Rex (@TheNorthSignal) January 27, 2020
Although rhetoric is clearly more extreme on darknet platforms the population of users is less. When Milo Yiannopoulous was de-platformed from YT (Or some other platform? Can't remember) his Telegram following was much smaller. Not saying tg is darknet, just illustrating my point— Drone the Anarcho-Alchemist 🏴(@DronestruckSec) January 27, 2020
Greenblatt goes on to applaud the efforts of other social media platforms, writing of YouTube and TikTok’s decisions to ban Holocaust denial.
“Addressing these problems will take a concerted effort by the tech industry,” Greenblatt writes. “For that to happen, though, there needs to be a full recognition of a basic reality: Holocaust denial is anti-Semitism and therefore hate speech.”
He also acknowledges internet companies’ struggles at policing such material.
While others at least attempt to crack down on Holocaust denial, Facebook chooses to allow it.
Greenblatt writes of a Facebook group called “Holocaust Revision” where members promote “a ‘Holocaust Deprogramming Course,’ which claims it will free readers ‘from a lifetime of Holo-brainwashing.’”
In its description, the private Facebook group claims it isn’t a Holocaust denier.
“This group is for actual research into what really happened during the Holocaust…” Holocaust Revisionism states, “how many people died, and how many people were transferred to Palestine.”
The 1933 Havaara Agreement between Nazi Germany and Zionist Jews secured the transfer of 60,000 Jews to Palestine. This was the only such agreement; it is often falsely cited as evidence of Hitler’s Zionism.
As Greenblatt notes, it doesn’t take much effort to find other examples of Holocaust denialism on Facebook.
Beneath posts like the one above, comments include, “People start to waking up.!!!!” and “We gotta boost those numbers up!”
Such content, Greenblatt asserts, is contributing to the proliferation of anti-Semitism and hate crimes against Jews, such as the mass shootings in Pittsburgh, Jersey City, and others.
The editorial concludes with this plea: “Social media companies can play a unique role in helping preserve that history by adopting policies that explicitly forbid Holocaust denial. In light of the wave of anti-Semitic violence that has plagued our country over the past year, it’s time for these companies to step up.”
In 2018, Mark Zuckerberg, who is Jewish, told Recode that while he finds Holocaust denialism “deeply offensive,” Facebook shouldn’t regulate such speech. “I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong,” he said.
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Claire Goforth
liberation
AFP / JANEK SKARZYNSKIThe infamous gate with its inscription "Work sets you free" greeted Jews and some others destined for Nazi gas chambers
For what could be the last time, elderly Holocaust survivors returned Monday to the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp 75 years after its liberation, to sound the alarm over a surge in anti-Semitic attacks on two continents.
More than 200 survivors from around the globe, some wearing scarves in the blue-and-white stripes of their death camp uniforms, returned to the site that Nazi Germany built in Oswiecim in then-occupied Poland, to share accounts and honour more than 1.1 million mostly Jewish victims.
The memorial ceremony in a sprawling tent set up in front of the red brick "gate of death" at the Birkenau side of the camp was held following deadly attacks against Jews, and the rise of white supremacist groups in the United States and far-right parties in Europe.
Royals, presidents and prime ministers from around 60 countries joined the survivors at Auschwitz, the notorious concentration camp that symbolises the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust.
As night fell, survivors and dignitaries carried flickering candles as they walked along the railway that brought Jews from across Europe to the gas chambers, before laying wreaths and their candles at a memorial monument.
The survivors had passed through the chilling "Arbeit macht Frei" ("Work makes you free") black wrought-iron gate at Auschwitz earlier on Monday before laying floral wreaths by the Death Wall where Nazi troops had shot thousands of prisoners.
AFP / Sophie RAMISMap of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp as it was in 1944 in Poland. Over a million Jews were exterminated in the camp by the Nazis between 1940 and 1945
"Auschwitz didn't fall suddenly from the sky, Auschwitz crept and tiptoed, taking small steps, it came closer, until this happened here," warned Marian Turski, 93, a Polish-Jewish survivor who called for vigilance against the abuse of minorities' rights as key to safeguarding democracy and preventing another genocide.
"Don't be indifferent!" he implored the royals and politicians gathered at the evening memorial ceremony.
From mid-1942, the Nazis systematically deported Jews from across Europe to six camps -- Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka.
"Too many people, in too many countries made Auschwitz happen," World Jewish Congress head Ronald Lauder said in an address.
"Practically every other European country helped the Nazis gather up their Jewish citizens," he noted.
AFP / Wojtek RADWANSKIThe head of the World Jewish Congress Ronald Lauder and Holocaust survivors attended a memorial service at Auschwitz-Birkenau
"It's shameful that 75 years later they (Auschwitz survivors) now see that their grandchildren face the same hatred again... this must never be tolerated," Lauder said, pointing to a spike in anti-Semitic rhetoric and sporadically deadly violence in the US and Europe.
Polish President Andzej Duda spoke out against Holocaust denial and historical revisionism after recently criticising Russian President Vladimir Putin who falsely accused Poland of colluding with Adolf Hitler and contributing to the outbreak of World War II.
Several heads of state, the presidents of Germany, Israel and Ukraine, and France's prime minister were among the leaders who attended the memorial.
At a separate Holocaust memorial event in Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germans "bear the responsibility of making everyone feel safe at home in Germany and in Europe". She vowed to combat "intolerance and hatred, racism and anti-Semitism" amid a resurgence of it in Europe.
- Allies knew in 1942 -
While the world only learned the full extent of its horrors after Soviet troops entered the camp on January 27, 1945, the Allies had detailed information about Nazi Germany's genocide against Jews much earlier.
AFP/File / JANEK SKARZYNSKIAuschwitz-Birkenau was the largest concentration camp and the one where the most number of people were killed
In December 1942, Poland's then London-based government-in-exile forwarded a document, titled "The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland", to western officials.
The document included detailed accounts of the unfolding Holocaust as witnessed by members of the Polish resistance, but drew disbelief and only muted reactions from the international community.
Polish resistance fighters Jan Karski and Witold Pilecki had risked their lives in separate operations to infiltrate and then escape from death camps and ghettos in occupied Poland, including Auschwitz.
- 'Final Solution' -
Considered an exaggeration and Polish war propaganda, "a lot of these reports were simply not believed", Oxford historian Professor Norman Davies told AFP.
Despite "strong demands" by the Polish and Jewish resistance for Allies to bomb railways leading to Auschwitz and other camps, "the military's attitude was 'we've got to concentrate on military targets, not on civilian things'," Davies said.
"One of the targets that the (British) military did bomb was a synthetic fuel factory near Auschwitz" in 1943-44, he added.
Although Allied warplanes flew over the death camp, no orders were issued to bomb it.
"It was one of the biggest crimes committed by those that were indifferent, because they knew what was happening here," Auschwitz survivor David Lenga, a 93-yer-old Polish Jew who now lives in California, told AFP next to a barbed wire fence inside the former camp.
"They could have done something about it and they deliberately didn't."
Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest Nazi death and concentration camp, and the site where the most people were killed.
Victims were primarily European Jews, but also Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and Poles.
Run from 1940 until 1945, Auschwitz was part of a vast network of camps built across Europe to carry out Hitler's "Final Solution" of genocide against an estimated 10 million Jews in Europe.
AFP / JANEK SKARZYNSKIThe infamous gate with its inscription "Work sets you free" greeted Jews and some others destined for Nazi gas chambersFor what could be the last time, elderly Holocaust survivors returned Monday to the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp 75 years after its liberation, to sound the alarm over a surge in anti-Semitic attacks on two continents.
More than 200 survivors from around the globe, some wearing scarves in the blue-and-white stripes of their death camp uniforms, returned to the site that Nazi Germany built in Oswiecim in then-occupied Poland, to share accounts and honour more than 1.1 million mostly Jewish victims.
The memorial ceremony in a sprawling tent set up in front of the red brick "gate of death" at the Birkenau side of the camp was held following deadly attacks against Jews, and the rise of white supremacist groups in the United States and far-right parties in Europe.
Royals, presidents and prime ministers from around 60 countries joined the survivors at Auschwitz, the notorious concentration camp that symbolises the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust.
As night fell, survivors and dignitaries carried flickering candles as they walked along the railway that brought Jews from across Europe to the gas chambers, before laying wreaths and their candles at a memorial monument.
The survivors had passed through the chilling "Arbeit macht Frei" ("Work makes you free") black wrought-iron gate at Auschwitz earlier on Monday before laying floral wreaths by the Death Wall where Nazi troops had shot thousands of prisoners.
AFP / Sophie RAMISMap of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp as it was in 1944 in Poland. Over a million Jews were exterminated in the camp by the Nazis between 1940 and 1945"Auschwitz didn't fall suddenly from the sky, Auschwitz crept and tiptoed, taking small steps, it came closer, until this happened here," warned Marian Turski, 93, a Polish-Jewish survivor who called for vigilance against the abuse of minorities' rights as key to safeguarding democracy and preventing another genocide.
"Don't be indifferent!" he implored the royals and politicians gathered at the evening memorial ceremony.
From mid-1942, the Nazis systematically deported Jews from across Europe to six camps -- Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka.
"Too many people, in too many countries made Auschwitz happen," World Jewish Congress head Ronald Lauder said in an address.
"Practically every other European country helped the Nazis gather up their Jewish citizens," he noted.
AFP / Wojtek RADWANSKIThe head of the World Jewish Congress Ronald Lauder and Holocaust survivors attended a memorial service at Auschwitz-Birkenau"It's shameful that 75 years later they (Auschwitz survivors) now see that their grandchildren face the same hatred again... this must never be tolerated," Lauder said, pointing to a spike in anti-Semitic rhetoric and sporadically deadly violence in the US and Europe.
Polish President Andzej Duda spoke out against Holocaust denial and historical revisionism after recently criticising Russian President Vladimir Putin who falsely accused Poland of colluding with Adolf Hitler and contributing to the outbreak of World War II.
Several heads of state, the presidents of Germany, Israel and Ukraine, and France's prime minister were among the leaders who attended the memorial.
At a separate Holocaust memorial event in Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel said that Germans "bear the responsibility of making everyone feel safe at home in Germany and in Europe". She vowed to combat "intolerance and hatred, racism and anti-Semitism" amid a resurgence of it in Europe.
- Allies knew in 1942 -
While the world only learned the full extent of its horrors after Soviet troops entered the camp on January 27, 1945, the Allies had detailed information about Nazi Germany's genocide against Jews much earlier.
AFP/File / JANEK SKARZYNSKIAuschwitz-Birkenau was the largest concentration camp and the one where the most number of people were killedIn December 1942, Poland's then London-based government-in-exile forwarded a document, titled "The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland", to western officials.
The document included detailed accounts of the unfolding Holocaust as witnessed by members of the Polish resistance, but drew disbelief and only muted reactions from the international community.
Polish resistance fighters Jan Karski and Witold Pilecki had risked their lives in separate operations to infiltrate and then escape from death camps and ghettos in occupied Poland, including Auschwitz.
- 'Final Solution' -
Considered an exaggeration and Polish war propaganda, "a lot of these reports were simply not believed", Oxford historian Professor Norman Davies told AFP.
Despite "strong demands" by the Polish and Jewish resistance for Allies to bomb railways leading to Auschwitz and other camps, "the military's attitude was 'we've got to concentrate on military targets, not on civilian things'," Davies said.
"One of the targets that the (British) military did bomb was a synthetic fuel factory near Auschwitz" in 1943-44, he added.
Although Allied warplanes flew over the death camp, no orders were issued to bomb it.
"It was one of the biggest crimes committed by those that were indifferent, because they knew what was happening here," Auschwitz survivor David Lenga, a 93-yer-old Polish Jew who now lives in California, told AFP next to a barbed wire fence inside the former camp.
"They could have done something about it and they deliberately didn't."
Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest Nazi death and concentration camp, and the site where the most people were killed.
Victims were primarily European Jews, but also Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and Poles.
Run from 1940 until 1945, Auschwitz was part of a vast network of camps built across Europe to carry out Hitler's "Final Solution" of genocide against an estimated 10 million Jews in Europe.
AS MEMORIES FADE A SPECIAL REPORT
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