CODOH

CODOH founder and chairman Bradley Smith

In November 1986, William A. Curry , a Nebraska entrepreneur and one of the anti -Semitic activists in the United States , attempted to publish a text denying the extermination of 6 million Jews by the Nazis as an advertising page in the student newspaper of the University of Nebraska's Daily Nebraskan He offered $ 1,000 for advertising. In addition, he offered $ 5,000 to the university to pay for an open discussion between revisionists and Holocaust historians. Neither the newspaper nor the university accepted Curry's proposal ^{[3] [7] [8]} .

Curry died in 1988 . Bradley Smith and his Holocaust Open Debate Committee created the idea. Smith became a Holocaust denier in 1979 after reading articles by French revisionist Robert Forisson . In the mid-1980s, Smith published the journal Prima Facie, which specialized in publishing Holocaust denial materials ^[3] .

Smith's method within the framework of CODOH was to advertise in the newspapers of US colleges and universities under the guise of exercising the right to freedom of speech and fight against censorship in order to challenge the generally accepted history of the Holocaust ^[6] .

The CODOH website says that the organization does not dispute the Nazi persecution of Jews and the deaths of many of them, but believes that the Nazi leadership had no purpose to destroy the Jews of Europe , the number of Jewish victims was significantly overstated, and there were never gas chambers for mass killings in German concentration camps ^{[ 2]} .

The site claims that Committee members are open to discussion and criticism and can change their minds when showing irrefutable facts. As the authors of the book Waves of Rancor: Tuning in the Radical Right write Robert Hillard and Michael Kate, this is just a trick to attract the attention of young people and rationally minded people. In fact, the content of CODOH materials is quite clear: the history of the Holocaust is called fraud, and its distribution is attributed to the Jewish lobby ^[9] .

According to the Anti-Defamation League , Smith is insincere when he says that he defends the freedom of academic research of the Holocaust, as he openly declares in extremist forums that this is just a device for propaganda of Holocaust denial ^[10] .

In the "Encyclopedia of Genocide", edited by Israel Charney, it is written that formally Smith distanced himself from outright anti-Semitism, but in his activity he actively collaborates with extreme right-wingers and racists ^[6]

The CODOH website contains a lot of information on Holocaust denial . Site visitors can search for any of more than 1000 individual documents using search tools, such as an index of articles on a topic and a list of new arrivals. Among other sections, the site disputes the objectivity and legal basis of the Nuremberg trials . The point of view is advocated that Jews are responsible for the crimes of the Bolsheviks , and at the same time, the links between Zionism and fascism are declared. Thus, CODOH represents Jews both as international communist conspirators and ultra-nationalist fanatics, who at the same time willingly collaborate with anti-Semites ^[2] .

Campus Campaign

In late 1991 - early 1992, CODOH sent an advertisement to university publications calling for an open discussion on the Holocaust. Most major universities, including Chicago, Yale, Harvard, George, Emory and others, refused to publish announcements as historically incorrect. However, it was published in the student newspapers of several large universities (for example, New York, Maryland, Duke, Cornell) with reservations about freedom of speech and free competition of ideas ^{[6] [11]} . As a result of this action, CODOH gained national fame ^[12] .

The revisionist lecture announcements were advertised in the university press ^[13] , the heading of the announcement text was approximately as follows: “The history of the Holocaust: what is wrong with it?” The topic for wide discussion . ” Advertising information about CODOH lectures was noticeable, so many thousands of young people read this information, debates began inside universities, partly splashed out in the same university multi-print runs, and partly in the largest central US newspapers ^[12] . The question itself is whether it is worth publishing such announcements and, if so, in what context, has become the subject of a separate discussion. For example, the editors of one of the newspapers transferred the money received for publication to the American Holocaust Memorial Museum ^[14] .

In total, about 70 collegiate and university newspapers published such announcements of the Holocaust discussion ^[2] , but in the early and mid-1990s, CODOH continued to regularly send announcement texts to campus newspaper editors. All these announcements are also published on the CODOH website.

Smith’s first announcement set out the critical position of the revisionists on the issue of making soap from human corpses ^[2] . In the first widely circulated advertisements, Smith stated that "the figure of 6 million Jewish deaths is an irresponsible exaggeration ... and there were no gas chambers in any camp in Europe that was under German control . " This announcement goes on to say that “the purpose of the Holocaust’s calculations is to enlist the sympathy of the world - and political and financial support for Jewish needs, especially for the formation of the state of Israel . ” CODOH also argued that “The US Holocaust Memorial Museum, without any convincing evidence, demonstrates murders in gas chambers that did not occur” ^[2] .

Frustrated by the high cost of large ads, Smith soon realized that the Internet was much better. He began to place small, low-cost advertisements in college newspapers, which only indicated the CODOH website and email addresses ^[2] . Besides the fact that these ads were cheaper, they also attracted the attention of readers with short slogans: “Ignore the police of thoughts” and “Judge for yourself”.

One name with evidence

In January 2009, ^[15] CODOH requested the United Nations and the New York media to provide the name of one person with evidence that he or she was poisoned by gas at Auschwitz. ^[16] This action, which was named “ One Person with Proof ” on the CODOH website, was published as “ The UNESCO Project ” ^[16] .

Bradley Smith claims that he previously addressed this request on behalf of CODOH ^[17] to reputable scholars and Holocaust researchers, but none of the more than 2,000 American scholars and researchers from Deborah Lipstadt to Alan Dershowitz provided him with conclusive evidence ^[16] .

The Anti-Defamation League argues that providing CODOH with any evidence is futile because Smith is a staunch revisionist and his goal is to advocate Holocaust denial, not seek truth. He refuses to acknowledge any evidence - both the victims and the Nazis themselves. ADL considers it normal that scientists do not engage in controversy with Smith and that this does not at all support his ideas ^[18] .

As observers admit, the “ campus ” CODOH campaign not only achieved its goal, but also surpassed it. Firstly, almost half of the universities did not close their doors to him, secondly, she was received with considerable enthusiasm by a significant part of the students, teachers and even managers, and thirdly, US television became interested in deniers for the first time ^[12] .

The controversy that erupted as a result of these announcements peaked in 1994 , when Bradley Smith managed to advance the Holocaust denial issue in the news on major American television stations. On March 20, 1994, the CBS Channel’s 60-minute news program dedicated a separate story to Holocaust denial. Then Smith, along with another denier, David Cole , took part in the Phil Donahue show ^[19] .

On January 15, 1992, the American daily New York Times published an editorial about the CODOH advertising campaign and various reactions to it in student newspapers, in which it wrote ^[20] :

Holocaust denial can be a huge injustice. However, the demands that his discussion go only within strictly defined frameworks may be even more unfair to the memory of the victims.

Another American newspaper, The Washington Post , wrote ^[13] :

The idea that these ads must be dealt with by prohibition is a bad strategy. Ironically, the phrase at the very beginning of the announcement is essentially true: “Pupils should be encouraged to study the history of the Holocaust in the same way they are encouraged to study any other historical event.”

As a result of this campaign, some universities introduced courses on the history of the Holocaust into the curriculum, where they had not existed before ^{[12] [21]} .

• Altman M. M. Section 1. Denial of the Holocaust abroad // Denial of the Holocaust: history and modern trends / I. A. Altman (composition.). - M .: The Holocaust Foundation , 2001. - 88 p. - (Russian Holocaust Library). - 1,500 copies - ISBN 978-5-8989-7008-6 .
• Polyan P. M. Denial and geopolitics of the Holocaust // A. R. Koch, P. M. Polyan. Denial of denial, or Battle of Auschwitz: Compilation. - M .: Three squares, 2008 .-- S. 37-38 . - ISBN 5-94607-105-X , ISBN 978-5-94607-105-5 , ISBN 978-5-94607-105-X (wrong) .
• Deborah E. Lipstadt. Chapter Tent he Battle for the Campus // Denying the Holocaust The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. - The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. - P. 183-208. - 233 p. - ISBN 0-452-27274-2 .
• Atkins SE Holocaust denial as an international movement . - ABC-CLIO , 2009 .-- P. 171-172. - 320 p. - ISBN 9780313345388 .
• Israel W. Charny , Simon Wiesenthal , Desmond Tutu . Encyclopedia of Genocide. - ABC-CLIO , 1999. - Vol. 1. - P. 186. - ISBN 9780874369281 .

• Fighting Holocaust Denial in Campus Newspaper Advertisements