Holocaust denial

Holocaust denial is the denial, downplaying, or trivialisation of the Holocaust, that is, the industrialised mass murder of around 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany between 1941 and 1945. Holocaust deniers mainly argue that:

1. The actual death toll of the Holocaust is much lower than the largely agreed-upon figure of 6 million;
2. The deaths of millions of Jews from disease, exposure, and malnutrition (conditions imposed on them/exacerbated by the Nazis for the purpose of facilitating millions of deaths) was unintentional and the consequence of Allied bombing of German transportation;
3. Nazi Germany only intended to deport/enslave the Jewish population of Europe rather than exterminate it;
4. Many Nazi crimes and atrocities were actually carried out by the Soviet Red Army and NKVD;
5. Certain figures or organisations which directly participated in the Holocaust (e.g. the SS, the Wehrmacht and the OUN) bear no responsibility for it; and
6. The Holocaust was an outright fabrication, invented by the Allies (who were supposedly led by a Jewish-Zionist world conspiracy) and in particular the Soviet Union, for the purposes of eliciting sympathy for Jews and creating a justification for the formation of the "State of Israel".

People who deny the Holocaust may not believe all of these arguments at once, as many of them (e.g. claiming that the Holocaust did happen but that the death toll is being exaggerated, and claiming that the Holocaust was an outright fabrication) are contradictory.

In most (though not all) academic circles studying the Holocaust and its aftermath (which includes Jewish scholars), it is considered such a unique event—unparalleled in sheer scale, planning, and brutality—that comparing it to or equating it with other massacres or genocides is also considered a form of denial, as doing so may (intentionally or otherwise) make the Holocaust look less severe by comparison.