Nizkor Project

The Nizkor Project (Hebrew נִזְכּוֹר, " We will remember " ) is the largest private site that confronts the Holocaust denial on the Internet. Founder and operator of the American and Canadian Kenneth McVay. The project is funded through donations and personal funds.

Content

The project consists of several interconnected components:

• The Shofar FTP Archive, a collection of tens of thousands of files with original documents, reports and articles to illustrate the Holocaust. It biographies of leading Nazis, accurate descriptions of the Nazi labor and extermination camps, their localizations and of Nazi organizations are included.
• The U.S. Office of Strategic Services has provided original documents by and about Adolf Hitler available.
• Gradually, all published court documents were made available to the Nuremberg process.
• The archive contains selected as relevant postings to the newsgroup alt.revisionism.
• About the site Deja other recent postings added on Usenet.
• The project also created special handouts for teachers and educators.
• Increasingly, audio documents are included, such as the Posen speeches Heinrich Himmler to SS officers on 4 and 6 October 1943.
• With FAQs Nizkor informed about topics such as Auschwitz -Birkenau and the Operation Reinhardt, as well as the Institute for Historical Review ( IHR), the Leuchter Report, the " Zündel pages " and others to the existence, function and dimension of gas chambers in to prove these camps and their denial in detail to refute point by point.

For this the project in response to the published by the IHR " 66 Questions and Answers about the Holocaust " has a page with the exact related thereto " 66 Questions and Answers about the Holocaust " is created. A summary of the arguments of Holocaust deniers, the site Deceit & Misrepresentation: The Techniques of Holocaust Denial ( " deception and misrepresentation: the methods of Holocaust denial ").

This entire material can be spotted quickly with an internal search engine. Even criminal - - ​​Unlike other internet projects with similar objectives Nizkor direct links to websites with are racist, revisionist history and the extreme right content to. They want to give the public its own assessment of these sources. Almost all project pages are now available in German translation.

Methodology

McVay taught the page as a central network archive for a large number of documents available to the public made ​​the users of the newsgroup alt.revisionism since about 1992, including documents relating to facts of the Holocaust, which sent received, selected and checked by members of the newsgroup of Internet users have. Had McVay initially written much of the information pages on the Holocaust and have it checked by a few volunteers, so today all archive pages are collected, written and checked by a larger team of volunteers. They are consistently converted to HTML format so that all the details and background information with direct links can be made accessible.

The project also releases documented ( e -mails, postings, conventional correspondence ) of so-called " hate groups " ( hate groups), right-wing extremists, Holocaust deniers and historical revisionists to the members of the newsgroup or the project workers. This typical, often recurring stereotypes and patterns of argumentation are confronted with the facts. You may also be informed of the authors themselves. The aim is the elucidation of their activities in the network and the direct refutation of false statements, forgery and misinterpretations by accurate factual material.

In this way, the archive has collected the publications of some of the most well-known Holocaust deniers for years, revealed its contradictions and its intentions presented critically, including David Irving, Ernst Zundel, Fred A. Leuchter, Germar Rudolf, Willis Carto and many others. Also some of their regular followers and supporters in the network have been made known.

Reactions of those affected

Some of the Holocaust denials represented by Nizkor were denied by their authors: Sun claimed Matt Giwer, the reports of his alleged statements had been falsified by Nizkormitarbeitern. Other Network Services, newsgroup archives, including the search engine Google, however, have authenticated his postings.

Neo-Nazis and revisionist historians engage the project staff often personally and claim that the site is being financed by Israel or Jewish organizations for Zionism. Views of opponents on the net for action against the project have also been documented: including an answer machine of the racist Tom Metzger. However, McVay rejects such attacks and should have not won every case brought against him libel. He receives, according to the Ottawa Citizen newspaper from 1996 daily death threats, so that he does not release his address.

Medial and professional reception

The Nizkor Project is used by many students and scientists as a reliable source of information about the scene of Holocaust deniers and historical revisionists and widely praised. Reports of print media in the U.S. are based on the offered material and quote it: about the newspapers Christian Science Monitor, The Guardian, USA Today, Washington Post and others. Also, the American Journal of International Law, a respected journal of international law, refers positively to the project and draws on his material.

The are some critical voices against, do not keep the methodology of the project placed to combat Holocaust denial in the Internet: How the Simon Wiesenthal Center accused the operators before, scale it rather the awareness of hate groups and insignificant web authors, rather than them by credibility and consent to avoid non-compliance.

Added to this was in 1995, a debate about legal action against slander and false propaganda on the net: McVay has always spoken with reference to the freedom of speech against those discussed in the U.S. and Canada " hate speech " laws. He founded in 1996 the Canadian Parliament, which is why he believes that the refutation of false allegations is better than their censorship. In an interview with Der Spiegel, he also attacked the German prosecution of Holocaust denial to be counterproductive. Supporters and opponents of prosecutions against Holocaust denial, however, have now approximated in the Zielperpektive each other.