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HOLOCAUST DENIAL: WHAT IT IS AND WHY EVANGELICAL SCHOLARS MUST
CATEGORICALLY REJECT IT
Richard V. Pierard, Ph.D.
Professor of History Emeritus, Indiana State University
Scholar in Residence and Visiting Professor, Gordon College
The Holocaust, the effort of the German Nazis to wipe out the entire Jewish population of
Europe, is the greatest tragedy that the Jewish people every faced. It is also a Christian problem
because most of the perpetrators of the Holocaust were baptized church members, and most of
the bystanders, those who did nothing to halt it or even to assist their beleaguered Jewish
neighbors, were also members in good standing of Protestant and Catholic churches.
Unfortunately, there are people out there who say the Holocaust never happened. For them to
say that the Jews imagined or invented their tragedy is the most vicious and virulent form of anti-
Semitism imaginable. It negates the shared experience of the Jewish community today and lays
the groundwork for the possibility of another attempt at total destruction. Although Holocaust
deniers may try to infiltrate our ranks, we as evangelicals must sound forth a firm and deliberate
"NO" to all efforts of deniers to spread their pernicious ideas among us.
Introduction
I would like to begin with three illustrations: The first is Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower,
who in his memoir, Crusade in Europe (p. 409), related his visit to the Buchenwald
concentration camp on April 13, 1945.
I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position
from then on to testify at first hand about these things in case there ever grew up at home
the belief or assumption that "the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda." Some
members of the visiting party were unable to go through the ordeal. I not only did so but
as soon as I returned to Patton's headquarters that evening, I sent communications to both
Washington and London, urging the two governments to send instantly to Germany a
random group of newspaper editors and representative groups from the national
legislatures. I felt that the evidence should be immediately placed before the American
and British publics in a fashion that would leave no room for cynical doubts.