In 2019, the Holocaust Revisionist Report, the first-ever assessment of how each member state of the European Union acknowledges its Holocaust history, was published in 2019 on the same day as UN Holocaust Remembrance Day. It found that the worst cases of Holocaust revisionism were found in Poland, Hungary, Croatia, and Lithuania.
It found that these countries have, in recent times, been rehabilitating the public images of officials who were Nazi collaborators and have tried to transform how the Holocaust is remembered by those in their nations. This is especially seen in Hungary, where the report notes that “The Hungarian government is minimizing its country’s participation in the genocide, rehabilitating war criminals, and introducing anti-Semitic writers into the national curriculum.”
The following are key points from the report:
- Many European Union governments are rehabilitating World War II collaborators and war criminals while minimizing their own guilt in the attempted extermination of Jews.
- Revisionism is worst in new Central European members – Poland, Hungary, Croatia, and Lithuania.
- But not all Central Europeans are moving in the wrong direction: two exemplary countries living up to their tragic histories are the Czech Republic and Romania.
- The Romanian model of appointing an independent commission to study the Holocaust should be duplicated.
- West European countries are not free from infection – Italy, in particular, needs to improve.
- In the west, Austria has made a remarkable turn-around while France stands out for its progress in accepting responsibility for the Vichy collaborationist government.
- Instead of protesting revisionist excesses, Israel supports many of the nationalist and revisionist governments.
Sources
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/c1aa54_d6fdacf05b6845a3a2cacbf80ed6720c.pdf
Bayer, Lili. “Study Finds Holocaust Revisionism Rampant in EU’s East.” POLITICO. POLITICO, April 18, 2019. https://www.politico.eu/article/anti-semitism-revisionism-holocaust-study-finds-holocaust-revisionism-rampant-in-eus-east/.
