What the WJC is doing to fight Holocaust denial and distortion - World Jewish Congress

What the WJC is doing to fight Holocaust denial and distortion

The WJC is committed to combat all manifestations of Holocaust denial, trivialization, or minimization, or any distortion, falsification, or misrepresentation of Holocaust history. This dimension of preserving and protecting the authentic history of the Shoah is especially important at a time when efforts are being made, especially in different parts of Eastern and Central Europe, to misrepresent the facts of the Holocaust as part of a political or social agenda.

The World Jewish Congress and Facebook announced on International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2021 that they were working together to prompt Facebook users searching for Holocaust related terms to learn more at AboutHolocaust.org, a comprehensive website containing authoritative information about the attempt to exterminate European Jewry. AboutHolocaust.org is an educational resource developed jointly by WJC and UNESCO that was made possible thanks to the support of Roman Abramovich and Chelsea Football Club’s Say No to Antisemitism campaign.

The WJC’s partnership with Facebook is the product of a long period of cooperation and a testament to the social media company’s receptiveness to ensuring that its users don’t fall victim to the purveyors of hate and ignorance. It came just a few months after Facebook credited WJC with helping the company expand its hate speech policy to remove content related to the Holocaust.

In line with these efforts, WJC has also worked to ensure that content and literature denying the Holocaust is neither featured nor sold by online retailers, such as Amazon.

The WJC and its affiliate, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, worked directly with Amazon to remove 92 works of Holocaust denial content from its platform, including the Leuchter Report, a pseudoscientific document which falsely claims to prove that the gas chambers did not exist.

In addition, the WJC also worked closely with Israel’s Ministry of the Diaspora Affairs to provide Amazon with an extensive list of nearly 700 pieces of online content denying the Holocaust. After extensive engagement with the WJC, one of the biggest book retailers operating in Germany and Austria, Thalia, removed over 300 books denying the Holocaust. In Latin America, after extensive engagement with the WJC, the largest online retailer in Latin America, Mercado Libre, also agreed to remove online listings of literature that promote hateful and antisemitic content.

A resolution during the WJC Governing Board meeting in Ottawa, Canada in May 2019 entitled “The Value of Holocaust Education and the Need to Combat Holocaust Denial through Education,”called on all states to:

  • Adopt the Working Definition of Holocaust Denial and Distortion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) in full.
  • Monitor, combat, and legislate against hate speech and Holocaust denial and distortion online and to put in place effective measures to facilitate the prevention and removal of such content.
  • Enact proper legislation to punish instances of Holocaust denial and Nazi glorification, including the promotion and use of Nazi symbols as well as the sale of Nazi memorabilia.

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