https://substack.com/home/post/p-158824015
In this blogpost by Craig Nelsen, we are shown a timeline of when interest in specific modern historical topics peaked (as judged by newspaper mentions):
• The atomic bomb
• Pearl Harbor
• The Holocaust
• The Moon landing
• 9/11
The Holocaust is shown to be an outlier in that interest peaked several decades after it supposedly occurred, when for other historical events, interest peaks within the decade (as might be naturally expected).
Chart of Holocaust References over Time casts Doubt
Re: Chart of Holocaust References over Time casts Doubt
Hi Egg,
Would you mind introducing the post a little bit more? Telling us why the link is of interest and giving us the highlights?
Would you mind introducing the post a little bit more? Telling us why the link is of interest and giving us the highlights?
Re: Chart of Holocaust References over Time casts Doubt
Norman Finkelstein makes this point in his book The Holocaust Industry. That was the first time I ever heard this (I was somewhat aware of revisionism at the time but was not really a revisionist yet). Finkelstein of course doesn't draw a revisionist conclusion but to me the obvious implication was that "the Holocaust" is very probably divorced from actual history.
It is important not to overstate the case though. While they didn't really use the term "the Holocaust" early on, the key elements of it, the Final Solution, the six million, the gas chambers, etc., were all there at Nuremberg in 1945. So it's not that the whole thing was made up decades later. But it obviously did increase in importance over time, the exact opposite of just about every other historical event.
There is a book, After the Holocaust: Challenging the Myth of Silence, edited by David Cesarani & Eric J. Sundquist, which is supposed to be a rebuttal to this. It seems the counterpoint is merely that there was some attention given to what we now call "the Holocaust" in the 50s, mostly among Jews themselves. But that wouldn't explain the relative emphasis and growing importance over time.
It is important not to overstate the case though. While they didn't really use the term "the Holocaust" early on, the key elements of it, the Final Solution, the six million, the gas chambers, etc., were all there at Nuremberg in 1945. So it's not that the whole thing was made up decades later. But it obviously did increase in importance over time, the exact opposite of just about every other historical event.
There is a book, After the Holocaust: Challenging the Myth of Silence, edited by David Cesarani & Eric J. Sundquist, which is supposed to be a rebuttal to this. It seems the counterpoint is merely that there was some attention given to what we now call "the Holocaust" in the 50s, mostly among Jews themselves. But that wouldn't explain the relative emphasis and growing importance over time.