Ready for some history?

The History Carnival XLII has been posted at Holocaust Controversies. Sergey runs a great blog about Holocaust denial and history; you should add Holocaust Controversies to your regular blogroll.

One entry that particularly saddened me was the story of how Deathcamps.org, which was a great resource for information on the Aktion Reinhard camps, self-destructed. Sergey gives an insider's account of its unfortunate demise in the wake of a dispute between members over the introduction of photos and documents of dubious authenticity, which Sergey strongly resisted while providing arguments and evidence that the material was not to be trusted. This dispute resulted in a clique taking over, excluding anyone not on its side, and finally dissolving Deathcamps.org in favor of a new website to be launched in November. Fortunately, all the old information has been transferred to a new website; so it's not lost as a resource. Sergey sums up the true cost of this dust-up:

Finally, while all this brouhaha will give a lots of pleasure to "revisionists", don't ever forget - the most probable hypothesis about the origin of these forgeries is that they were created by a denier under a guise of a Holocaust researcher. (S)he has found some naive souls, indeed. But the bottom line is that these forgeries weren't created to "prove" the Holocaust. Quite the opposite.

It's depressing to see this sort of thing happen among those dedicated to fighting Holocaust denial, particularly the backstabbing and sarcastic snipe that "I do not accuse any of them [Sergey and the others kicked off the board of Deathcamps.org] of being deniers."

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