What made you first question the holocaust?

[Jazz]

I decided to Google "Nazi death camps" and clicked on the first link "Deathcamps.info". I can't believe I believed these stupid lies, there's absolutely no evidence at all that supports what this website claims:

The Holocaust was the systematic annihilation of six million Jews during the Nazi genocide - in 1933 nine million Jews lived in the 21 countries of Europe that would be occupied by Nazi Germany during World War 2. By 1945 two out of every three European Jews had been killed.

The number of children killed during the Holocaust is not fathomable and full statistics for the tragic fate of children who died will never be known. Estimates range as high as 1.5 million murdered children. This figure includes more than 1.2 million Jewish children, tens of thousands of Gypsy children and thousands of institutionalized handicapped children.

In his book Sheltering The Jews the Holocaust historian Mordecai Paldiel later wrote:

""Never before in history had children been singled out for destruction for no other reason than having been born. Children, of course, were no match for the Nazis' mighty and sophisticated killing machine .."

KZ Dachau was the first concentration camp established in Nazi Germany - the camp was opened on March 22, 1933. The camp's first inmates were primarily political prisoners, Social Democrats, Communists, trade unionists, habitual criminals, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, beggars, vagrants, hawkers.

I began questioning aspects of the holocaust horror story when I started reading more about the Waffen SS. I thought it was odd that men couldn't join with a criminal record. I thought to myself why would the Nazis care? They were murdering/experimenting on Jews, gypsies, blacks and homosexuals anyway.

After watching a lot of documentaries on the SS and their involvement in the holocaust. I thought it was pretty slack that no one had mentioned some of the attrocities committed against the Germans, after all it's been over 70 years. I was annoyed and upset that people actually laughed at seeing American soldiers executing terrified German POWs. It really is pathetic how the Germans are portrayed as ugly sadistic cowards, especially in movies like Saving Private Ryan. I actually don't know of any nation that spawned more brave, handsome men (That's my personal opinion) I didn't even know Germany had foreign volunteers until I read "Loyalty is my honour" by Gordon Williamson and was surprised that they were treated fairly even though they were "sub-human".

There's also the Auschwitz photo album that belonged to an SS guard (which is full of normal, dare I say, sweet photography of him and his friends). And how the female voiceover explains how "amazing" the photo album is because it shows that these evil sadists were in fact human, and not soulless monsters brainwashed by the anti-Christ Adolf Hitler.

Later on I tried to find more information on allied atrocities and stumbled across an article about what Russian soldiers did to German women. I posted the link on "The Axis Forum" for everyone to read and the first reply I got was "Be careful, that was posted on a neo Nazi website! I wouldn't trust his sources", I instantly felt guilty and apologised. It turned out to be an article that Ernst Zundel wrote. I visited his website out of curiosity (a few days later) I wanted to read what else this "crazy racist nutjob" had to say for himself but it wasn't crazy or even racist.

I think I was on YouTube searching for holocaust junk when I saw David Cole in Auschwitz in the related links. Like a lot of HONEST people I wasn't convinced overnight but I wasn't blowing it off straight away either. It took me months to see this story for what it is and led me to other things.

I can't tell you guys how hard it was for me to take that first "step" into revisionism, my heart was literally pounding I was that scared. I guess because I didn't want to dishonour the memory of the Jewish victims, I thought it'd make me a bad person. After I read the evidence I was still trying to find another explanation and harassed users on this forum and bombarded people who supported holocaust revisionism with questions. There was even a point where I had a believer and non believer sending me messages. I'm very happy to say that there's absolutely no doubt in my mind, the holocaust never happened.

I'd like to read what made you guys question the holocaust

[Zulu]

The first start to me was the affair Garaudy-Abbé Pierre in France about "The Founding Myths of Israeli Politics". That story made me curious for reading a book which appeared to be so scandalous on the medias. I wanted to know more on how a work could be so "dangerous" for the people. By chance it was on internet..
On it, the approach of the question of "gas chambers" under a technical point of view called my attention. I desired to know more and I fell on the Pressac's book, also available on internet.
Then, the first doubt appeared when I saw the plans of Krema II and the sections of the "gas chambers" (Leichenkeller). As an engineer, such place was in anyway compatible with the idea of a "death factory" planed to kill thousands of people. Then, I wanted to know much more.
Internet and the availability of revisionist material was determinant on my knowledge and formation as a revisionist..

[ovd1965]

David Cole Video , followed by Rassinier Books......... ( especially because Rassiniers personal history as an prisoner)

[Bonesy]

Several things for me (in no particular order):

Skepticism of some of these authentic 'survivor' testimonies
Hate speech crime in Europe
The global politics about the holocaust (i.e. use as justification of Israel's crimes against Palestine)

[Dresden]

"Thought Crimes", "Witch Trials", "Truth is no defense", and destruction of "Heretics" did it for me, followed by "Did Six Million Really Die?", "Dissecting the Holocaust", and "Made in Russia: The Holocaust".

Also, the fact that the "Holocaust" promoters absolutely refuse open, public debate (not internet "debate") in America, where we still have the hollowed-out husk of "free speech", is one of the biggest "red flags" I can imagine; it screams "HOAX!" loud and clear!

[mincuo]

To me it wasn't a problem. I knew that the history (for the people) was always a fraud written by the victors.
So Nero the Evil was a fraud, or the Galileo commonly painted was a fraud, or the causes of the first war were a fraud and so on. Moreover I saw a rigid censorship for recent history, particularly about fascism and nazism regularly treated in a simplified Angel/Demon scheme. The more you need this scheme, the more it is false. So I wasn't surprised by reading in the first revisionist articles that many things about Shoah were false. Indeed among all the other stories the Angel/Demon scheme is at a paroxysmal level in the Shoah.

[Bankdraft]

The realization of the relationship between the Russians and the Germans following WWII. Specifically, the Russians controlled virtually all the land (and therefore all the evidence) on which the holocaust was purported to have taken place and they had 20M reasons to hate the Germans. The 4M Auschwitz figure (and indeed, the entire Auschwitz canard) is whole-cloth fabrication by the Soviets.

Once you take even a cursory look at the holohoax, it crumbles like the house of cards it is.

[castlewarden]

In 2008 in a libertarian forum it was mentioned that Germar Rudolf is not a Nazi but a Catholic conservative which was a surprise for me. This caused me to lose my compunction in visiting vho.org (I heard of the website before in the Usenet but never visited the site).

What surprised me most was the overall civil tone - compared to the hysterical ad hominems one usually finds on believer's web sites.
Especially the point "What does Holocaust Revisionism claim?" http://vho.org/Intro/GB/index.html#5 made me interested in finding out more. So I read the entire book "Belzec" by Mattogno and then compared with what proponents of the traditional official holocaust story claim.

Then I posted in forums about that topic and used VHO (and IHR and sometimes even Yad Vashem's website) to counter the claims the believers made. They could not refute the evidence. Winning discussions was so easy that I soon lost interest in the topic.

Recently I downloaded and read the excellent book "The Gas Chamber of Sherlock Holmes" which shows how these legends developed.

It is so good to rid the world of this destructive myth. It does no good, it only makes people paranoid and ill.

[castlewarden]

P.S. Forgot to mention, before I read Mattogno I first read Rassinier because I found him credible - as he was a French socialist who was imprisoned in Buchenwald.

[Arsènelupin]

I read the "Mémoire en défense", by R. Faurisson, circa 1980. In spite of the fact that this book concerns a very limited part of the "genocide" problem, it shew me that "sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare and unreliable", as A. Mayer said.

[Kingfisher]

It was a very slow process over 10 years.

The first trigger was Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry. He didn't question the reality of the Holocaust though.

Then the refusal of the mainstream to debate with Revisionists for clearly invalid reasons. What were they scared of?

Irving's jailing in Austria. But Irving still believed in the Reinhard camps. I was interested and began to look at Irving's site.

The VHO pamphlet, that set out clearly that the Revisionists did not question the deportations or the awful conditions in the camps at the end of the War. I learned for the first time that Zyklon B was a commercial product with a legitimate use. I then read Did Six Million Really Die?. By now I was a Holocaust agnostic.

Started Irving's Nuremberg: The Last Battle. Didn't get into it -- too long, but I dipped selectively. Read enough to be suspicious. Read More on Nuremberg: Mark Turley Nuremberg to Ninevah and Carlos Porter: Not Guilty at Nuremberg. By now accepted Nuremberg was a kangaroo court.

Read a wide range of Revisionist books. Impressed by Rudolf's Lectures and Graf's Giant with Feet of Clay. Watched videos: David Cole's Auschwitz and Denierbud's One Third of the Holocaust.

I was finally convinced by Denierbud's Buchenwald video. which explained how the propaganda turned into a universally-believed myth.

[jheitwler]

Stumbled across the "Treblinka" episode of One Third of the Holocaust on YouTube. I then spent some time verifying that what Denierbud said about the traditional history of the camp was accurate. I also read all the comments on YouTube and Denierbud's answer to them. (This was after Denierbud had locked the comments section but before YouTube took Denierbud's videos down) That is what opened the Pandora's box for me. I had come across holocaust denial literature and video clips before this but as soon as they started talking about the whole "Jewish conspiracy" crap, I tuned out. Fortunately Denierbud doesn't burden his videos with blatant antisemitism.

[simon1003]

The first time I visited Dachau. It just seemed all a bit false, a bit too fake, especially the American-built gas chambers, they're so amateurishly cobbled together that you can't help but ask questions about them.

Also the fact that the camp is just on the edge of the town of Dachau, right next to a pre-war housing suburb. If you wanted to torture and kill people in secret it's a really bad location to choose.

[Bankdraft]

The vehemence with which the holocaust is protected – it is "hands off" to everyone – is very telling.

There was a holocaust museum (largely U.S. Government supported) on the National Mall (Washington, DC) before there was even a WWII museum. In my little southern U.S. city (pop. 750,000) we have a @#$%&* holocaust museum. All this for something that did not happen on American soil (if it happened at all) and did not involve any Americans. Contrast that with the 12 foot high marker (located at the corner of Massachusetts and New Jersey avenues in Washington, DC) for the estimated 100 million (some say the number is much higher) people who died at the hands of communism in the 20th century The holocaust is better represented in the U.S. than the War of Northern Aggression (also know as the American Civil War) in which the United States lost 10% of her male population from the north and an incredible 30% of her men from the south.

Another poster pointed out that Denierbud's videos were removed from YouTube which is just another indicator of what can only be called the censorship involved in protecting the holocaust. Speaking of YouTube (Google owned), they (Google) felt they had to offer an explanation for their own search results which used to return “Jewwatch.com” as the first choice when searching “jew”. As an aside, once this became known, Wikipedia was “bombed” so that “jew” now returns Wikipedia as the first choice.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

[Atigun]

A family member made the statement that the holocaust was, in fact, a hoax. At the time I believed the claim that six million Jews had indeed been murdered with poison gas and then disposed of by cremation. I began to research the holocaust in order to refute the obviously absurd claim that the holocaust was a fraud. It didn't take long before I began to realize that I had been a well propagandized gullible fool, duped into believing an utterly ridiculous fraud. Rather humiliating to discover that I had been manipulated like a small child being told about the tooth fairy. People are reluctant to make such an admission which, I believe, is a large part of belief in the hoax.