WJC Latin America launches website to combat Holocaust denial

The moves are designed to curb the proliferation of revisionism in Spanish-language cyberspace.

Advertisement

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — The Latin American chapter of the World Jewish Congress launched a Spanish-language website to combat Holocaust denial.

The website went online on April 16, Israel’s national day of commemoration for Holocaust victims. The site, www.seismillonesnuncamas.com, which means “six million never again,” targets Spanish-language websites, where Holocaust denial is increasing, according to the WJC site’s initiators.

“We launched a website to show how the hate is spreading on the web,” Ariel Seidler, director of the Web Observatory, a watchdog group set up by several Latin American Jewish groups, told JTA. “We encourage people to report videos that spread hatred and encourage the addition of positive content.”

According to the Web Observatory, some 350 Spanish-language videos denying the Holocaust have received nearly 10 million views collectively.

Some of the films are tagged with the word “holocuento,” a term used to lampoon the Holocaust or suggest it did not happen, similarly to “holohoax” in English or “shoananas” in French.

In 2011, a civil court in Buenos Aires ordered Google to eliminate anti-Semitic search suggestions from its Argentine browsers and drop some 76 websites described in the complaint as “highly discriminatory,” including some that deny the Holocaust.

Nazism and Holocaust denial are still alive, “and we can see this on the Internet,” said Claudio Epelman, executive director of the Latin American Jewish Congress, the regional branch of the World Jewish Congress.

Recommended from JTA

Advertisement