Keystone-SDA
The Museum of the former Nazi extermination camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau launched a campaign against negationism on social networks on Wednesday.
(Keystone-ATS) The online tool “Stop Denial” (“Stop denials”) makes it possible to refute current negationist arguments using “documents, photographs, testimonies or results of historical research,” said the Auschwitz museum in southern Poland.
This tool includes a manual explaining to users how to react to negationist content on social networks by commenting on messages and referring to a link to the “Stop Denial” website.
Museum director Piotr Cywinski said in a statement that, in the past, “few people could look at the survivors in the eye and assert that all their testimonies were lies.”
Information against disinformation
“Today, there is little left. Anti-Semitic, xenophobic and populist voices are therefore rising, “he added.
Museum spokesperson Bartosz Bartyzel said the launch of the campaign followed a “wave of negationist activity” on social networks and in public discourse.
“The best solution, the best help, the best remedy for disinformation is information,” he told AFP.
Earlier this month, MEP Grzegorz Braun-this year’s Polish presidential candidate, who collected more than 6 % of the vote-said in a radio interview that “Auschwitz and his gas chambers are unfortunately false”.
In May, the museum warned against Facebook publications containing fictitious images of the camp victims generated by artificial intelligence.
The museum has long used its accounts on social networks to share authentic photos and information from victims in order to raise public awareness of the holocaust.
Nazi Germany built the Camp of Oswiecim’s death after occupying Poland during the Second World War.
The Holocaust site has become a symbol of the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany against six million European Jews, one million of which died in this camp between 1940 and 1945. More than 100,000 non-Jews also died in Auschwitz-Birkenau, including non-Jewish Polish, Roma and Soviet soldiers.
