Why they deny the Holocaust – Los Angeles Times
By Ayaan Hirsi Ali, AYAAN HIRSI ALI, a Somali immigrant who served in the parliament of the Netherlands until earlier this year.
ONE DAY IN 1994, when I was living in Ede, a small town in Holland, I got a visit from my half-sister. It was the first time, I had heard of the Holocaust. I was 24 years old at that time, and my half-sister was 21.I saw pictures of masses of skeletons, even of kids. I heard horrifying accounts of some of the people who had survived the terror of Auschwitz and Sobibor. I told my half-sister all this and showed her the pictures in my history book. What she said was as awful as the information in my book.
With great conviction, my half-sister cried: “It’s a lie! Jews have a way of blinding people. They were not killed, gassed or massacred. But I pray to Allah that one day all the Jews in the world will be destroyed.”
She was not saying anything new. As a child growing up in Saudi Arabia, I remember my teachers, my mom and our neighbors telling us practically on a daily basis that Jews are evil, the sworn enemies of Muslims, and that their only goal was to destroy Islam. We were never informed about the Holocaust.