cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/14905603
Gaza mass grave: Almost 400 bodies have been found, says Palestinian Civil Defense | CNN
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/14905603
Gaza mass grave: Almost 400 bodies have been found, says Palestinian Civil Defense | CNN
Denial happens all times, not only in Holocaust.
The nazis also went to Warsaw Ghetto and gave once a dinner to starving Jews and made a movie out of it to prove to their population that they were treated well and were complaining for nothing.
But if you want something specific, you can look on the site below, which starts with denials beginning 1942:
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/holocaust-denial-key-dates
A small excerpt:
*1942–44 To conceal the evidence of their annihilation of Europe’s Jews, Germans and their collaborators destroy evidence of mass graves at the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka killing centers, and at thousands of sites of mass shooting operations throughout German-occupied Poland, the German-occupied Soviet Union, and Serbia, including Babi Yar, in an operation code named Aktion 1005.
1943 In a speech to SS Generals at Poznan, Heinrich Himmler, Reich Leader (Reichsführer) of the SS (Schutzstaffel; Protection Squadrons), remarks that the mass murder of the European Jews will be kept secret, never to be recorded.*
Which just shows you the level of intelligence the Nazis were working with.
“Hey, you guys took over Europe and millions of Jews living there just vanished! What happened to them?”
“Uh… um… aliens?”
The goal is not to proof that they didn’t do it, or even to make it the rational assumption that they didn’t do it.
The goal is to muddy the water just enough, so some people can subscribe to “it’s complicated” (note how we hear that one a lot these days) or “innocent until proven guilty! And where is the convictions?!” By gaining the information advantage, they effectively demobilize actions towards prevention before or prosecution after. Also it gives just enough wiggle room, so allies can continue to support and opponents struggle to muster definite action.
This game is played expertly by the US, by Russia, by Israel, and China, and used to be played by the Nazis, Pinochet, UDSSR and many more.
It is crucial to collect evidence and it is crucial to never relent demanding investigation and prosecution. Otherwise we’ll get some historians in a hundred years writing a book about everything that happened and everybody will just be like “a well that was ages ago now, wasn’t it?”