"Do you know for a fact?"

In AS class this past week we were discussing about when research and evidence becomes fact. Someone in our class asked, "If we have interviews, pictures, and websites all confirming the same thing, can we put it into our paper as a fact?". Our teacher suggested that instead of stating what is thought to be a fact as a fact, we should instead say something like, "according to a, b, and c...". This got me thinking: what if, no matter how much evidence of an event a person had, people still didn't believe it happened? What if there are artifacts, first hand witnesses, photo's, and writings but people still believed that what you believe clearly happened, was a complete fabrication?

Within the past week, a group of Imams visited the Auschwitz, a concentration camp created during World War II. Many people believe it will help decrease Holocaust Denial among the Muslim community considering that Holocaust denial has been increasing throughout the world. Get more information about this trip here. Before a few weeks ago I had never heard of Holocaust denial. To me, the Holocaust clearly happened and there was no doubt in my mind that a mass killing of 12 million people was fabricated. I am not sure why someone would want to deny what seems to be so obvious or what would make them feel as if a massive event like the Holocaust could never happen.

According to Wikipedia, a few key claims of Holocaust deniers include:

• The Nazis had no intention or official policy for exterminating Jews
• The number of Jews killed (about 6 million) is a huge exaggeration.
• The Nazis did not use gas chambers for the mass murders
• The Holocaust was made up by the Allies of WWII to demonize Germans.
• Testimonies from survivors include errors and misrepresentations, hence not trustworthy.
• Documentation (The Diary of Anne Frank, letters, photos etc.) was a fabrication.

I recognize that I do not know a whole lot about Holocaust Denial but I find it amazing that with all of the evidence that the Holocaust actually happened, people don't believe it happened. Maybe I find it more amazing than other people (you tell me) because one of my relatives survived the Holocaust in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. My dad's aunt/my great aunt Hilda and her family were placed in concentration camps and only my great aunt and her mother survived. Her entire family could have survived had they been allowed to enter Cuba after sailing from Holland. They were actually aboard a famous ship, the SS St. Louis, that was denied entrance into Cuba and forced to return to Germany where most of the Jews onboard were taken into Nazi control. You can read more about the tragedy here. After seeing the tattoo of my great aunt's prison tracking number on her left arm, there is no doubt in my mind that the Holocaust was a fabrication. How much more evidence is needed?