Holocaust Denial: Anti-Semitism as a Refusal to Accept Reality

Technische Universitat Berlin To belittle the significance of or deny that the Nazi state committed genocide against European Jews is a punishable offence in Germany and Austria, in Switzerland, France, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania and Poland. With this, legislators sought to protect Holocaust victims and their descendants from affront and insult. Further, this criminal sanction is the constitutional state’s response to antiSemitism, and so is more than acknowledging and honouring the presence of a Jewish minority in society or the official result of lessons drawn from history. Due to Germany’s historical responsibility for the Holocaust, how the genocide of the Jews is approached and handled is first and foremost a problem confronting German political culture.