TheStar.com - Holocaust denial brings together left and right

To argue that WWII genocide elevates Jewish suffering is t o trivialize it, says Anna Morgan Public attacks on the Holocaust are once again current, and they are making for strange bedfellows. The assault on memory brings together the president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with Ernst Zundel, publisher of the notorious screed Did Six Million Really Die? All seem to agree that the entire episode was a conspiratorial Jewish fabrication. Canadian Holocaust denial — or, more accurately, minimizing — comes not only from right-wing neo-Nazi groups, but from associations and individuals on the left who dress it up as an infringement on other peoples' human rights. In these skewed arguments, the so-called defenders of our rights claim that remembering the slaughter of millions of European Jews somehow gives an unfair preference to the Jewish community today. In a submission to the Toronto District School Board in response to its human rights policy, one writer, who professed expertise in the area of race relations and education, demanded that Holocaust denial be removed from the list of banned hate group behaviours. As part of his pitch he argued that the TDSB's existing human rights policy regarding the Holocaust stifles academic freedom because it limits a teacher's abilities to present "ongoing research ... which help to revise old facts or expose them as mere myths."