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Open Debate as Anti-Jewish Hatred

By Bradley R. Smith ∙ August 15, 1993

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Below an article headlined “Holocaust Denial Seen Gaining Ground,” an AP dispatch reports:

“Activity [by revisionists] has stepped up in recent years, as television and radio talk show hosts have given people who dispute the Holocaust air time.

“Last year, Bradley Smith, who heads a group called Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust, placed ads in student newspapers at Cornell, Duke, Michigan and Northwestern [and a dozen other—ed.] universities suggesting that the Holocaust was fabricated, stirring up controversy over freedom of speech and hate messages.”

The article then quotes David Singer, research director for the non-partisan American Jewish Committee: “Holocaust denial is not about historical truth. It is about anti-Jewish hatred as part of a political agenda—and must be confronted as such.”

— The Los Angeles Times, 7 May 1993

  • Bradley R. Smith

    Bradley R. Smith was born in Los Angeles on February 18, 1930. At 18 he joined the army and in 1951 served with the infantry in Korea where he was twice wounded. After three decades of a variety of professional activities, it suddenly hit him: In 1979 he read a leaflet by Professor Robert Faurisson, "The Problem of the Gas Chambers." Then, Arthur Butz’s The Hoax of the Twentieth Century did it for him. He understood from the beginning that he would address the censorship, the suppression of independent thought, the taboo against publishing and debating revisionist arguments—not the arguments themselves. That has remained his position. In 1989, Smith founded Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) dedicated to defending free speech and free inquiry into the Holocaust question. He handed over CODOH's helm in late 2014. He passed away on his 86th birthday, February 18, 2016. Read a series of obituaries here.

Bibliographic information about this document: Smith's Report, no. 15 + 16, Summer 1993, pp. 21f.
Other contributors to this document: n/a
Editor’s comments: n/a

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