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Holocaust Denial and Criminal Liability
Radslav Král, Police Academy of the Czech Republic in Prague, Ph.D. candidate
The goal of this article is to draw our attention to the phenomenon of the Holocaust denial. Its malicious potential for both the present and the is future reflected in the fact that there still exist individuals in the world who deny the Holocaust as such, who further published their books and who continue to be publically active.
Their lies are based on race theories which consider people not to be equal and question the common nature of all human beings. They confuse the concepts of “nation“ and “race“. They forget that all human beings belong to the Homo sapiens race and that all people have the same ancestors. These race theories were used as a justification for the extermination of Jews and members of other nations in 1930s and 1940s, particularly in Germany.
Seventy-five years has passed since the end of the Second World War. Since that time, sufficient evidence has been gathered that further documents the existence of Holocaust. Nevertheless, there are still individuals who constantly deny the Holocaust by spreading their pseudo-scientific conclusions promoting of the so-called “alternative truth“.
The fact that forty individuals were convicted by courts in the Czech Republic in the course of the last decade for denying the Holocaust reminds us of the reality that the battle against all sorts of lies will never end. Especially so, the battle against such a vicious lie as the Holocaust denial is, a lie which has still its proponents even in the 21st century.
Key words: anti-Semitism, Holocaust, Shoah, denial.