Dialogue Document
Joint Statement on Dealing with Holocaust Revisionism (1994)
Joint Statement on Dealing with Holocaust Revisionism By delegates of the Synagogue Council of America and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, March 14, 1994
"Ever since World War II various extremist, often neo-Nazi groups have sought to deny the crimes of the Nazis, particularly the attempt to exterminate the Jewish people. We condemn these prejudiced efforts and the racial hatred they would incite.
In the 1970's, proponents of Holocaust denial began to camouflage their message of hatred and antisemitism under a veneer of scholarly terminology in order to regain respectability. Rather than stating their beliefs straightforwardly, they began to call themselves "historical revisionists," pretending to be interested in challenging and "revising" common understandings of the period.
In this guise of holocaust revisionism, the denials of the evils perpetrated by Nazism against so many peoples and groups in Europe sought to rehabilitate the tattered image of National Socialism (Nazism). To some extent they succeeded in getting their views considered in unsuspecting academic symposia that took their claims to scholarly integrity at face value."