WJC Latin America opens website to combat Holocaust denial

Cnaan Liphshiz

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

The website targets Holocaust denial of the genocide on Spanish-language websites, something that is increasing according to the initiators of the WJC website.

The new site, www.seismillonesnuncamas.com, whose domain name means “six million never again,” went online on April 16, Israel’s national day of commemoration for Holocaust victims.

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

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

Some of these 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 Argentinian browsers. The court ordered Google to drop some 76 websites described in the complaint as “highly discriminatory,” including some that deny the Holocaust.

While World War II ended in 1945, 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, or LAJC, the regional branch of the World Jewish Congress.