• DOI:10.1080/14623520601162881
• Corpus ID: 71844425

From the Editors: Judges and Politicians as Historians?

@article{Schaller2007FromTE,
  title={From the Editors: Judges and Politicians as Historians?},
  author={Dominik J. Schaller},
  journal={Journal of Genocide Research},
  year={2007},
  volume={9},
  pages={1 - 4}
}

• D. Schaller
• Published 1 March 2007
• Political Science
• Journal of Genocide Research

On 26 January 2007, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted a resolution (61/255) that condemns any form of denial of the Holocaust. This resolution has been celebrated in the media and among human rights activists as a milestone and an adequate answer to the disgusting anti-Semitic rhetoric of the Iranian president Ahmadinejad who publicly declares that the Holocaust is a “myth” and who sponsored a dubious conference in Teheran last December where infamous Holocaust deniers had the opportunity to present and discuss their absurd theses. Without doubt, the ban on Holocaust denial is an important duty since this negationism is more than just a harmless crime. Gregory H. Stanton, the founder and president of Genocide Watch, has correctly remarked that genocide denial has to be seen as the last stage of a genocidal process. Therefore, the relativisation or even denial of genocide cannot be justified by the right of freedom of speech because it diminishes the dignity of the victims and it deeply hurts the survivors and their descendants. Moreover, genocide denial puts the identity of victim groups into question and has a negative impact on their coping with the political, social and cultural consequences of genocide. Thus, I fully recognize the need to combat genocide denial as such. However, I have doubts whether the above-mentioned UN resolution really contributes to this aim. By stating that the denial of the events of the Holocaust is tantamount to the approval of genocide in all its forms, the resolution’s claim is universal. Nevertheless, the resolution does not ban the denial of genocides as such and other crimes against humanity explicitly, and therefore, it strengthens the scientifically irrelevant thesis of Holocaust uniqueness. In that sense, the resolution diminishes or even denies the importance of other instances of genocide and thus contributes to a dubious and reprehensible hierarchy of suffering. The example of UN resolution 61/255 shows clearly how problematic the intervention of politics and judiciary in the scientific and public dealing with the legacies of genocides and in corresponding debates on adequate forms of remembrance can be. Moreover, this problem does not exist on a supranational level only. In many European countries, there are laws that prohibit the denial of the murder of European Jewry during World War II. Alternatively, the genocide against the Ottoman Armenians 1915–17, for example, can be disputed without legal consequences. It is not surprising that this injustice mobilizes different victim groups who want their fate to be recognized politically and legally. The Armenian community in France, for instance, was rather successful in that respect. Despite Journal of Genocide Research (2007), 9(1), March, 1–4