This term, most of the year have been studying an Introduction to the Holocaust.

Last Wednesday we had a very interesting guest speaker, Dr William Allington, who talked to Year 10 about his PhD on the Holocaust and the Holocaust deniers. He started his presentation acting as William Scott, a Holocaust denier working on his PhD; however, we did not know this. As “William Scott”, he was trying to disprove that the number of people who were murdered in the Shoah, that gas chambers didn’t really exist in Auschwitz, and that there was no evidence that any of this was Hitler’s idea as he never officially signed documents. This was very confronting and confusing to us, though some of us knew that something was off. “William Scott” allowed us to ask questions, however, he gave very vague answers and avoided answering the questions directly. He presented himself as knowing all the current facts and was very objective, which made us believe he was rational and correct. 

Then, he – now Dr William Allington – told us that all of this was fake, and it pleasantly shocked (and relieved) us to hear that he didn’t actually believe that the Holocaust was fake. This “Woah!” moment was so interesting as he told us that our instincts were correct. From this, Dr Allington taught us how to tell whether someone is a Holocaust denier and how to sufficiently debate against their irrational ideas or poorly substantiated claims. He broke this down into pillars and gave us examples of evidence and tactics that we can use if we were to find ourselves in this kind of conversation.

The most important aspect is that we should not let these comments slide as they can influence others to also believe this rhetoric. I loved the presentation and thought it was such a good idea to start off by showing us how to identify a non-obvious holocaust denier. I will definitely take his points into consideration if I ever am in that situation. It was so interesting and gave me a deeper understanding and insight into Holocaust deniers.

By Elise Kitchener