27 January marks the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of persecution, honouring the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. This year marks 80 years since the end of the Holocaust, yet antisemitism — hatred of Jews — has increased and is creating a sense of insecurity within Finland’s Jewish community. JEF Finland demands that the Finnish Parliament criminalise Holocaust denial.
Nazi Germany murdered more than six million Jews and five million people belonging to other groups, such as sexual minorities and Roma people, in the Holocaust. In the Holocaust, Jews were stripped of their human rights and their right to life. Europe’s Jewish population was destroyed at a rate that led to the complete annihilation of Jewish communities in several European countries.
One form of antisemitism is Holocaust denial or its trivialisation. Holocaust denial is already criminalised in 17 countries, including Austria and Germany. The need for criminalisation stems from the strongly antisemitic nature of Holocaust denial. Most Holocaust deniers do so to smear Jewish people and to imply that the Holocaust was a grand conspiracy in which more than 6 million people were not actually murdered. The overwhelming body of evidence — including photographs, Nazi testimonies from the Nuremberg trials, and the concentration camps themselves — makes denying or trivialising the Holocaust impossible without some ulterior motive behind such a claim. That is why criminalising Holocaust denial closes off another avenue through which antisemitic speech can be expressed. Laws on Holocaust denial have emerged elsewhere in Europe because people spread false information to incite hatred against Jews.
Taking responsibility for the Holocaust has always been difficult in Finland, and it has happened too late. It was only in 2000 that former Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen became the first Finnish head of government to publicly apologise for Finland’s extradition of Jews. Finland’s Jewish congregations in Helsinki and Turku still face a continuous threat to this day. In autumn 2023, the Jewish congregation of Helsinki had to consider, among other things, closing its doors even to its own congregation.
“Finland is still home to a strong and vibrant Jewish community that deserves to exist and practise its own religion in safety. By criminalising Holocaust denial, we can move closer to a society free of hate speech and antisemitism. Finland owes this to its Jews,” snaps JEF Finland’s President Nea Baarman.
Holocaust denial is always antisemitic hate speech. There is no debate about whether the Holocaust happened – it happened.
For more information:
Nea Baarman
President