After the Holocaust

The Holocaust became the dark symbol of the 20th century's crimes against humanity. In its aftermath, scholars and artists struggled to explain what seemed to be the most irrational act of the Western world.

Theodor Adorno ceased his work as a composer, declaring, "writing any more poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric". The concepts of civilization and of progress were called into question more profoundly than after the slaughter of World War I. Germany, one of the most enlightened European countries, radiant with art, literature and philosophy, was guilty of arguably the worst crime against humanity ever committed. It was left to literature, such as Primo Levi's If This Is a Man (1947) or Robert Antelme's The Human Race (1947) to describe what poetry, according to Adorno, could not describe.

Evidence in Germany
For decades, Germany refused to allow access to its Holocaust-related archives in Bad Arolsen, citing privacy concerns. In May 2006, a 20-year effort by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum led to the announcement that 30–50 million pages would be made available to historians and survivors.

Displaced Persons and the State of Israel
The Holocaust and its aftermath left millions of refugees, including many Jews who had lost most or all of their family members and possessions, and often faced persistent anti-Semitism in their home countries. The original plan of the Allies was to repatriate these "Displaced Persons" to their country of origin, but many refused to return, or were unable to as their homes or communities had been destroyed. As a result, more than 250,000 languished in DP camps for years after the war ended.

While Zionism had been prominent before the Holocaust, afterwards it became almost universally accepted among Jews. Many Zionists, pointing to the fact that Jewish refugees from Germany and Nazi-occupied lands had been turned away by other countries, argued that if a Jewish state had existed at the time, the Holocaust could not have occurred on the scale it did. With the rise of Zionism, Palestine became the destination of choice for Jewish refugees, but local Arabs opposed the immigration, the United Kingdom refused to allow Jewish refugees into the Mandate, and many countries in the Soviet Bloc made any emigration illegal. Former Jewish partisans in Europe, along with the Haganah in Palestine, organized a massive effort to smuggle Jews into Palestine, called Berihah, which eventually transported 250,000 Jews (both DPs and those who hid during the war) to the Mandate. By 1952, the Displaced Persons camps were closed, with over 80,000 Jewish DPs in the United States, about 136,000 in Israel, and another 20,000 in other nations, including Canada and South Africa.

Survivors' welfare in Israel
As of 2005, 40% of the 400,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel live below the poverty line, resulting in heated and dramatic protests on the part of survivors against the Israeli government and related agencies. The average rate of cancer among survivors is nearly two and a half times that of the national average, while the average rate of colon cancer, attributed to the victims' experience of starvation and extreme stress, is nine times higher.

Searching for records of victims
There has a been a recent resurgence of interest by descendants of survivors in researching the fates of their relatives. Yad Vashem provides a searchable database of three million names, about half of the known Jewish victims. Yad Vashem's Central Database of Shoah Victims Names is searchable over the Internet yadvashem.org or in person at the Yad Vashem complex in Israel. Other databases and lists of victims' names, some searchable over the Web, are listed in Holocaust (resources).

Holocaust theology
On account of the magnitude of the Holocaust, many theologians have re-examined the classical theological views on God's goodness and actions in the world. Some believers and former believers question whether people can still have any faith in God after the Holocaust, and some of the theological responses to these questions are explored in Holocaust theology. In it orthodox Jews state their reasons for why they believe the Holocaust happened and, to a more extreme degree, why they felt the Jews of Europe deserved to die.

Art and literature
German philosopher Theodor Adorno famously commented that "writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric," and the Holocaust has indeed had a profound impact on art and literature, for both Jews and non-Jews. Some of the more famous works are by Holocaust survivors or victims, such as Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl and Anne Frank, but there is a substantial body of literature and art in many languages. Indeed, Paul Celan wrote his poem Todesfuge as a direct response to Adorno's dictum.

The Holocaust has also been the subject of many films, including Oscar winners Schindler's List and Life Is Beautiful. With the aging population of Holocaust survivors, there has been increasing attention in recent years to preserving the memory of the Holocaust. The result has included extensive efforts to document their stories, including the Survivors of the Shoah project and Four Seasons Documentary, as well as institutions devoted to memorializing and studying the Holocaust, including Yad Vashem in Israel and the US Holocaust Museum. The historic tale of the Danish Jews fleeing to Sweden by fishing boat is recounted in an award-winning American children's novel.

Holocaust Memorial Days
The United Nations General Assembly voted on November 1, 2005, to designate January 27 as the "International Day of Commemoration in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust." January 27, 1945 is the day that the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated. The day had already been observed as Holocaust Memorial Day a number of countries. Israel and the Jewish diaspora observe Yom HaShoah vea hagvora, the "Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and the courage of the Jewish people," on the 27th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, which generally falls in April.

Holocaust denial
Holocaust denial is the assertion that the Holocaust did not occur, or that far fewer than six million Jews were killed by the Nazis; that there never was a centrally planned attempt to exterminate the Jews; or that there were no mass killings at the extermination camps. Those who hold this position often claim that Jews or Zionists know that the Holocaust did not occur and are engaged in a conspiracy to further their political agenda. As the Holocaust is considered by historians to be one of the most well-documented events in recent history, these views are not accepted as credible, with organizations such as the American Historical Association stating that Holocaust denial is "at best, a form of academic fraud." Public espousal of Holocaust denial is a crime in several countries, including Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Switzerland. See Laws against Holocaust denial for details.

Holocaust deniers often prefer to be called Holocaust "revisionists." Most scholars contend that the term is misleading. Historical revisionism is a mainstream part of the study of history; it is the reexamination of accepted history, with an eye towards updating it. In contrast, negationists may willfully misuse historical records; as Gordon McFee writes: "Revisionists depart from the conclusion that the Holocaust did not occur and work backwards through the facts to adapt them to that preordained conclusion. Put another way, they reverse the proper methodology ... thus turning the proper historical method of investigation and analysis on its head." Public Opinion Quarterly summarized that: "No reputable historian questions the reality of the Holocaust, and those promoting Holocaust denial are overwhelmingly anti-Semites and/or neo-Nazis."

Holocaust denial has become popular among Muslim opponents of Israel. The doctoral dissertation of Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian National Authority since 2005, raised doubts that gas chambers were used for the extermination of Jews and suggested that the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust was less than a million. Abbas has not espoused this position since his appointment as Palestinian Prime Minister in 2003, and has denied being a Holocaust denier. In late 2005 Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described the Holocaust as "the myth of the Jews' massacre." Mainstream Iranian television, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, broadcasts cartoons and other programs suggesting that the Holocaust is a Jewish conspiracy created primarily as a justification for the existence of the State of Israel.