Colleges blitzed with ads denying Holocaust

On Sunday, November 23, 1997, The New York Post printed an article concerning the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH). This libelous and misleading article was immediately responded to by CODOH. Our response which has been sent to The New York Post can be found below.

Reponse to the New York Post, November 23, 1997

The Committee for Open Discussion of the Holocaust Story strenuously objects to the characterization of CODOH as a “hate group” which believes that the Holocaust was a “Jewish conspiracy.” Not only is this untrue, it is a cruel mistruth calculated to frighten Jewish people.

CODOH's position is that the Holocaust story is rife with errors and hysterical misperceptions. We do not believe that the Holocaust was a “conspiracy” — rather, we simply feel that the gassing stories are false and arose out of an atmosphere of delusion during and after the war, and were aided to a limited extent by a handful of individuals, mostly Soviet and Polish communists, who gave the gassing legend its current form.

All we ask is that our claims be evaluated and discussed in the light of day, and that the social taboos on this subject be broken. Failure to do so, we fear, will only encourage an increasing vulgarization of our intellectual life and the ongoing suppression of Free Speech. 50 years after the fact, the undeniable great suffering and loss of life of the Jewish people in World War Two deserves to be looked at clearly and openly. It is time for honest revision of the Holocaust.

The New York Post article

Colleges blitzed with ads denying Holocaust

By Fredric U. Dicker and Gregg Birnbaum, Post Corresondents

ALBANY— An anti-Jewish hate group is targeting New York college newspapers with paid ads denying the Nazi Holocaust, The Post has learned.

The shadowy Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust claims that widely accepted accounts of Nazi mass murders during World War II are nothing more than a Jewish conspiracy.

CODOH has placed its ads and opinion pieces in student newspapers at Colgate University and at state university campuses in New Paltz, Binghamton and Fredonia.

After a campus outcry a week ago, Todd Ceisner, editor of the SUNY Fredonia Leader, publicly apologized.

“There is no excuse as to why the ad was run, nor should there be,” he said.

“There is a time to admit a regrettable mistake and convey our sincere embarassment.”

SUNY Albany's campus newspaper recently refused to run the ad.

But earlier this month, CODOH successfully persuaded SUNY Binghamton's newspaper, Pipe Dream, to publish a Holocaust-denying op-ed article.

Embarrassed college President Lois DeFleur fired off a letter to the paper saying that while “a firm believer in the rights protected by the First Amendment, I have cause for concern… when expressed views distort and minimize documented historical atrocities.”

One CODOH ad purports to offer a $50,000 reward to anyone who can get a prime-time airing on national TV of its “documentary” on the Auschwitz death camp.

CODOH has been bragging about its successes in placing ads in SUNY newspapers by listing the names of the campuses on its Internet web site.

“After being quiet for some time, CODOH is making a new push on New York college campuses,” said Jeffrey Ross, the Anti-Defamation League's director of campus affairs.

“College newspapers are much more likely to run these ads because of the people who run them. Student editors tend to be characterized by a unique combination of naivete and idealism, with an impulse to publish everything,” Ross said.

The ADL classifies CODOH as an anti-Semitic “hate group” whose “message is that the widespread belief that the Holocaust happened is the result of a Jewish conspiracy.”

[PARTIAL GRAPHIC OF CODOH $50,000 AD; Caption reads:]

CHILLING: This ad in the New Paltz Oracle offers big bucks to get a Holocaust-denying video aired on national TV.