Journal: Global Journal of Classical Theology
Volume: GJCT 04:1 (Feb 2004)
Article: Holocaust Denial: What It Is And Why Evangelical Scholars Must Categorically Reject It
Author: Richard V. Pierard

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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
Wenham, MA 01984 U.S.A.
CharRichP@aol

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 the bystanders, those who did nothing to halt it or even to assist their beleaguered Jewish neighbors, as well were members in good standing of Protestant and Catholic churches. Unfortunately, there are people out there who claim 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.

The second illustration comes from a feature article by writer John Sack entitled “Daniel in the Deniers Den,” in Esquire magazine, February 2001. He is describing his experiences at an “international conference” of the Institute for Historical Review at a hotel in Orange County, California. There he dined with a man from Alabama, Dr. Robert Countess, a Presbyterian minister and scholar of classical Greek and Hebrew who was a self-proclaimed evangelical. He had taught briefly at Covenant Col...

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