"When people say online that the Holocaust never happened, they say that my father, my sister and sixty members of my family were not murdered by the Nazis," says Lea Evron, today 85 years old. Of Polish origin, she escaped the extermination camps along with her mother when her father and sister were deported in 1943.
In a video posted on Facebook, nine Holocaust survivors including Eva Schloss, Anne Frank's half-sister, ask Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of the social network, to remove negationist content. This video was produced in partnership with the Claims Conference, an organization created in 1951 in particular to work to recover looted property.
Beginning today the Claims Conference will be posting video messages across social media from #Holocaust #survivors imploring Mark Zuckerberg to remove Holocaust denial from #Facebook. Denying their suffering / loss is hate speech; there is #NoDenyingIt. Join them; share to remove! pic.twitter.com/kmpgq1KNuj
- Claims Conference (@ClaimsCon) July 29, 2020US law does not prohibit negationist comments
"Those who say that the Holocaust did not exist call me a liar," sums up Sidney Zoltak, also of Polish origin, who escaped the camps by hiding in villages in Poland. In a document published in early July, the anti-Semitism organization Anti Defamation League (ADL) gave several examples of Facebook groups in which users openly questioned the existence of the Holocaust or its extent.
Among them, the CODOH group or "committee for an open debate on the Holocaust", where messages were still visible on Wednesday denying the reality of the genocide of the Jews of Europe during the Second World War.
If in many European states, revisionist or negationist remarks are liable to criminal prosecution, in the United States, the latter are not prohibited by law. Case law tends to place them under the protection of the First Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of expression.
70 counterattack messages ready
In July 2018, Mark Zuckerberg, who is himself Jewish, explained that he did not want to remove denialist posts from Facebook. Asked by AFP, Facebook said it was removing any content that "defended" the Holocaust, "tried to justify it", "accused victims of lying" or incited hatred or violence against Jews. But the platform does not remove content "only because it is false," said a spokesperson, and therefore does not remove negationist content, even if it seeks to limit its propagation on the platform.
The Claims Conference plans to upload a video of a survivor every day "until Facebook acts," a spokeswoman said, explaining that more than 70 messages were already ready. The organization indicates having asked Mark Zuckerberg to meet survivors to listen to their story "and understand why denial is hate speech," said the spokesperson.
In June, the social network found itself under fire from criticism when several associations defending the rights of minorities called for a boycott of the platform to obtain that it better control content inciting to hatred, racism or violence.
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