Trivialization ofthe Holocaust is the act of making comparisons that diminish the scale and severity of the atrocities committed byNazi Germany.[1] TheWiesel Commission defined trivialization as the abusive use of comparisons with the aim of minimizing the Holocaust and banalizing its atrocities.[2]
Manfred Gerstenfeld identifies trivialization of the Holocaust as one of the eleven forms of Holocaust distortion; he defines Holocaust trivialization as the application of language that is specific to describing the Holocaust to events and purposes that are unrelated to it.[3] According to Gerstenfeld, such unrelated issues include environmental problems, abortion, killing of animals, tobacco consumption, and human rights abuses.[4] According to David Rudrum, examples of Holocaust trivialization includeLord Wigley invokingAuschwitz to oppose nuclear weapons andAl Gore citingKristallnacht in defence of the environment.[5]
German political scientistClemens Heni [de] writes: "Contrary to the hard-core version, soft-core denial is often not easily identifiable. Often it is tolerated, or even encouraged and reproduced in the mainstream, not only in Germany. Scholars have only recently begun to unravel this disturbing phenomenon. Manfred Gerstenfeld discusses Holocaust trivialization in an article published in 2008. In Germany in 2007 two scholars, Thorsten Eitz and Georg Stötzel, published a voluminous dictionary of German language and discourse regarding National Socialism and the Holocaust. It includes chapters on Holocaust trivialization and contrived comparisons, such as the infamous 'atomic Holocaust', 'Babycaust,' 'Holocaust of abortion', 'red Holocaust' or 'biological Holocaust.'"[6]
The Holocaust survivor and memoiristElie Wiesel wrote, "I cannot use [the word 'Holocaust'] anymore. First, because there are no words, and also because it has become so trivialized that I cannot use it anymore. Whatever mishap occurs now, they call it 'holocaust.' I have seen it myself in television in the country in which I live. A commentator describing the defeat of a sports team, somewhere, called it a 'holocaust.' I have read in a very prestigious newspaper published in California, a description of the murder of six people, and the author called it a holocaust. So, I have no words anymore."[7]
During theHistorikerstreit, many scholars believed the position taken in theHolocaust uniqueness debate byconservative intellectuals led byErnst Nolte – namely that the Holocaust was not unique, Germans should not bear any special burden of guilt for the "Final Solution to the Jewish Question", there was no moral difference between the crimes of theSoviet Union and those ofNazi Germany, as the Nazis acted as they did out of fear of what the Soviet Union might do to Germany, or that the Holocaust itself was a reaction to theBolshevik Revolution and the Soviet Union—trivialized the Holocaust, and echoedNazi propaganda.[8]
The German historianThomas Kühne writes that "[t]he more provocative historians were in doing so and the more they thereby questioned the uniqueness, or the peculiarity, of the Holocaust, the more their work was met with resistance or even disgust, most prominently and controversially the German Ernst Nolte in the 1980s."[9]
Comparing modern-day Israel to Nazi Germany, or the plight ofPalestinians to that ofJews under Nazi occupation, has been criticized as trivializing the Holocaust or as antisemitic. TheAnti-Defamation League (ADL) accusedGilad Atzmon of trivializing and distorting the Holocaust specifically in the context of theIsraeli–Palestinian conflict. According to the ADL, Atzmon invoked the wordShoah to describe Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, among other abuses.[10]
TheCentre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA) condemned theUnited Church of Canada for trivializing the Holocaust. According to the CIJA, the United Church of Canada published a document[11][12] in which they placed a statement decrying the "loss of dignity" on the part of the Palestinians, attributed to Israel, promptly after a similar statement acknowledging "the denial of human dignity to Jews" in the Holocaust.[13]
During a visit to Berlin, Palestinian PresidentMahmoud Abbas toldOlaf Scholz that "Israel [had] committed….50 massacres, 50 slaughters, 50 holocausts" after he was inquired if he would apologize for theMunich massacre by Palestinian terrorists. Scholz stated in a message to theBild newspaper that "for us Germans, any relativization of the Holocaust is unbearable and unacceptable."[14][15]
After Brazilian PresidentLuiz Inácio Lula da Silvacompared Israeli actions during theGaza war to the Holocaust,Dani Dayan, the chairman ofYad Vashem museum, said the comments represented blatant antisemitism and "an outrageous combination of hatred and ignorance," further stating that "comparing a country fighting against a murderous terror organization to the actions of the Nazis in the Holocaust is worthy of all condemnation." Israeli Prime MinisterBenjamin Netanyahu responded to Lula's comments by saying "The words of the President of Brazil are shameful and alarming. This is a trivialization of the Holocaust and an attempt to harm the Jewish people and Israel's right to defend itself."[16]
A report by theWiesel Commission criticized the comparison ofGulag victims with Jewish Holocaust victims, as was done inThe Black Book of Communism, as an attempt at Holocaust trivialization.[2]
The double genocide narrative holds that there were two contemporary genocides of equal weight, aNazi one and aStalinist one.Michael Shafir calls the double genocide theory a form of Holocaust obfuscation,[17] while Carole Lemée sees it as a symptom of persistentantisemitism.[18]
InThe Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe,Ljiljana Radonić writes that the double genocide theory proposes the existence of an equivalency betweencommunism andNazism. Radonić posits that this theory and charges of Communist genocide both come from "a stable of anti-communist émigré lexicon since the 1950s and more recently revisionist politicians and scholars" as well as the "comparative trivialization" of the Holocaust that "results from tossing postwar killings of suspected Axis collaborators and opponents ofTito's regime into the same conceptual framework as the Nazi murder of six million of Jews", describing this as "an effort to demonize communism more broadly as an ideology akin to Nazism".[19]
The termred Holocaust was coined by theInstitute of Contemporary History (Munich Institut für Zeitgeschichte) at Munich.[20][21] According to the German historianJörg Hackmann [de], this term is not popular among scholars in Germany or internationally.[21]Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine writes that usage of this term "allows the reality it describes to immediately attain, in the Western mind, a status equal to that of theextermination of the Jews by theNazi regime."[22] Michael Shafir says that the use of the term supports the "competitive martyrdom component" of thedouble genocide theory.[17] George Voicu states that Leon Volovici has "rightfully condemned the abusive use of this concept as an attempt to 'usurp' and undermine a symbol specific to the history ofEuropean Jews."[23]
Some trends onsocial media platforms have trivialized the Holocaust. In 2020, teenagers posted onTikTok videos of themselves dressed in Holocaust-themedfancy dress, and TikTok banned thehashtagHolocaustchallenge.[5]
Yad Vashem criticized the Kremlin's claim that theRussian invasion of Ukraine was aimed at the "denazification" of Ukraine, as false and a trivialization of Holocaust history.[24][25] According to the philosopherJason Stanley, this reflects an antisemitic conspiracy theory which casts Russian Christians, rather than Jews, as the true victims of Nazi Germany.[26] TheFortunoff Archive for Holocaust Testimonies also condemned the invasion and described Putin's rhetoric as Holocaust trivialization,[27] and theUS Holocaust Memorial Museum denounced Putin's characterization of Holocaust history.[28][29]
On 21 March 2022, Ukrainian presidentVolodymyr Zelensky was criticized by Yad Vashem for creating afalse equivalence between the Russian invasion and the Holocaust, while Israeli Prime MinisterNaftali Bennett found the comparison of the two events to be inappropriate.[30]
A coining of communism as 'red Holocaust,' as had been suggested by theMunich Institut fur Zeitgeschichte, did not find much ground, neither in Germany nor elsewhere in international discussions.
