I would advise you to tell him to give you the supposed "Red Cross" report. He's the one who's disputing the status quo, so you shouldn't be the only one who has the burden of evidence. I have a feeling that the report, if he finds it at all, is either fabricated completely or is missing some very important context (for example, maybe it's written in 1940, or maybe it's specifically about the Holocaust in Libya, etc, etc).

I'd also ask him what sort of evidence he would accept before you really start digging in to your research. It'd be a shame to spend an afternoon digging up citations by professional historians, only to find out that he's only going to accept primary sources. Have him nail down what sort of evidence would convince him, and then do your best to give it to him. Goalpost shifting is a very common response to evidence that contradicts our beliefs, so make sure that those goalposts are pinned down.

Your friends response to the above will determine if this is a debate that's even worth happening. The Holocaust's existence is as universally accepted in the field of history as the law of gravity is in the field of physics, so as long as he's willing to listen to actual historians and reputable sources, you should be fine. The problem is that many Holocaust deniers aren't doing it because of reason, logic, or evidence, but because of ideology, or because of very convincing ideological liars.

If your friend is simply a victim of these liars, the Nuremberg trials are an excellent place to start. Thousands of guards and administrators were prosecuted as a result of these trials, and not a single one used the defense of "the Holocaust didn't happen". They're public record, and they're primary sources, so they don't suffer from the "but that's just what the MAN wants you to think" argument that you often get when arguing with conspiracy theorists.

This question is asked here often, which is disturbing in terms of how prevalent holocaust denial is, but encouraging in terms of how many people come here looking for help refuting it. You've certainly come to the right place. u/commiespaceinvader did a superb monday methods post regarding holocaust denial and how to combat it. It's a great place to start, but that's not to discourage other replies.

My previous answer on the Red Cross Report has already been linked but it is imperative to know that the ICRC itself published a refutation of these claims in a 1979 bulletin where they write:

A machination initiated years ago has gone so far that the ICRC is now entangled in its mesh. Its object is to whitewash the National Socialist system in wartime Germany of the accusation of genocide. (...) Consequently the ICRC considers it must make clear the fact that is has never published – or even compiled – statistics of this kind [meaning statistics of all victims of the Holocaust] which are being falsely attributed to it.

As to the ITS document numbering 271.000, they write:

The same propaganda scheme has recently been making use of other figures, namely the number of deaths recorded by the International Tracing Service on the basis of documents found when the camps were closed. Obviously this number bears no relation – though the authors of the propaganda pretend otherwise – to the total deaths in concentration camps; firstly because a considerable number of documentary material was destroyed before the departure of the Nazi administration, and secondly because many deaths were never recorded, such as those which occurred in the extermination camps where records were generally not kept.

They end with this very true statement:

There is, incidentally, something revolting about this arithmetical controversy as if such a tragedy could be reduced to mere figures.

Furthermore, I have written about how historians arrive at the number of deaths in the Holocaust here including a variety of key sources like the Korherr Report and the Höfle Telegram.

The websites hdot.com and holocasutcontroversies – the latter being run by /u/sergey_romanov – also provide great resources, in particular the trial materials provided by hdot.

I've also written about Holocaust Denial before and how to combat it.

To do your own archival research, especially when you do not speak German makes... not that much sense in my opinion, especially since the resources I mentioned above as well as the variety of books on this subject by academic historians should be enough to convince anyone who engages in good faith debate but if you are adamant, next to the German archives in the Bundesarchiv in Berlin as well as the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, the Nuremberg Documents are available online as are the full text of the published materials. Furthermore, the National Archives in Washington have copies of all the captured German records.

In case this is the same 'Red Cross' report, you may be interested in this answer by /u/commiespaceinvader in After WWII, what did the International Red Cross conclude, in it's investigations into the holocaust?

And potentially, How was it that the Red Cross was so deceived by the Concentration Camps?

Hello! The first part is easy to address

You can point out to your friend that:

a) the document doesn't come from the Red Cross in the first place;

b) the RC has never published any camp death totals;

c) the numbers in the document pertain only to the people who 1) died in some of the concentration camps (so you won't find Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Kulmhof, Maly Trostinets there, as they were pure extermination camps) and 2) were registered in the camps (so you won't find most Auschwitz victims there, since most of those gassed were of course gassed without becoming inmates) and 3) their friends or relatives actually applied for a registration of their death after the war (so you see that the numbers are actually a far cry even from the registered totals, which already constituted a small minority of all victims).

Add to this that only about half of all Holocaust victims died in the camps in the first place and you'll make your friend look really silly.

All the supporting links for the above you'll find at http://holocaustcontroversies.blogspot.com/2017/05/rebutting-twitter-denial-most-popular.html#redcrossstats

As for how the Holocaust totals are arrived at: through the country-by-country demographic analysis, taking into account the fragmentary Nazi deportation documents.

Due to many documents having been destroyed we cannot, of course, estimate the total with precision - credible estimates range from 5 to 6 million.

I know you don't read German, but as an example of a summary numbers study, here is one of the most authoritative ones, by numerous scholars, each responsible for 1-2 countries: https://www.degruyter.com/view/product/220100

It looks like the myth regard the Red Cross report has sufficiently been refuted by /u/commiespaceinvader, but I'd like to add a few words on holocaust denial within historiography. Your frustration is very understandable. The academic discipline of history has had it's own battle with holocaust deniers. Specifically after roughly the seventies, they increasingly started to mimic the methodology and appearance of historians. However, do not be fooled by this. The most prolific holocaust deniers have not practiced proper historical practices or methodology, not in the slightest.

When we are confronted with those who cherry-pick their data and denounce widely accepted facts as myths for no reason other than their personal belief system, it can be a very confusing challenge. Why are our facts more true than theirs? History is a subjective discipline, isn't it? Well, it is and it isn't. While we do study history through our personal frame of mind and through the lens of our sources, we still deal with facts or the interpretation of facts. We also still employ an academic process designed to uncover a past reality through academic concensus. It's entirely pointless to denounce facts out of some nihilistic view on subjectivity. The acknowledgement of subjectivity and the existence of a shared factual reality aren't mutually exclusive.

That's basically what many holocaust deniers do, they attempt to refute long-established facts by undermining the authority of every source presented. It's basically an extremely nihilistic view on science in which personal beliefs, the value of an authors moral character according to these beliefs andthe resulting emotional arguments trump factual data. I bet that sounds familiar, doesn't it? While re-examining the cornerstones of knowledge within a discipline is an essential part of any academic process, this needs to be done rationally and through academic concensus. That's how knowledge works, otherwhise it's a delusion.

There have also been historians who didn't refute these basic facts, but who did tried to minimize the importance of the holocaust. This culminated in an event known to historians as the "Historikerstreit", which roughly translates to "argument between historians". This happened a few years after Helmut Kohl his administration had come into power in Germany, an administration which examplified a more rightwinged political climate in Germany, compared to prior administrations. The historian Ernst Nolte accidently initiated this dispute by publishing an article which was seemingly minimalized the very unique context of the holocaust in an attempt to deflect responsability. The result was entire polemic on the historical importance of the holocaust. While the participants in this dispute didn't deny the basic historical facts, it did cause quite a stir within the discipline of history.

Why do I mention this last group of historians if they didn't exactly deny the holocaust? Well, besides simply trying to be all-inclusive, this dispute also resulted in an article which is in my opinion one of the best responses to holocaust denial or minimalization. I've linked it before, it's called "Historical Knowledge and a Historical Reality : A Plea For Internal Realism" by Chris Lorenz and you can find it here.

I'll quote the end of this article here : "Historians themselves claim to represent the past and thus describe to the 'reality-rule'; the mere fact that the past is only known by us through a frame of description therefore does not entail the conclusion that the past is a description or can be regarded as such.". I couldn't have said that any better myself.

• Jean-Michel Chaumont, La concurrence des victimes. Génocide, identité, reconnaissance
• Chris Lorenz, Historical Knowledge and a Historical Reality : A Plea For 'Internal Realism'
• Putnam, Reason, Truth and History

Your friend is almost certainly motivated by something other than earnest but mistaken belief.

Simply presenting a denialist with a body of evidence is generally not going to cut it, you have to understand their motivation. Is he anti-Semitic? That's by far the most common reason but it's not the only one. Some people simply love a conspiracy theory and believing they know something the world doesn't.

The fact is you have a friend that is denying an established fact they could easily verify for themselves. Just like people who believe the Earth is flat, his method of determining what is true is fundamentally flawed and to stand a chance of making any progress with him you have to check every assumption you both make. That is where you will discover some enormous logical leaps they're making.

Others here have done a good job of helping you address specific false claims but you are not dealing with an intellectually honest or competent individual and before wasting too much time, it's crucial to keep that in mind.

wouldn't it be easier to ask him to show you said red cross report?

I would use Mein Kampf as a good example to know what Hitler wanted or was going to do with groups such as the Jews and the Slavs in the chapter "The First Period in the Development of the National Socialist German Workers Party" Hitler mentions that the only way to have the nationalization of the masses (that is spreading Nazi ideology to the German people) was to have those supposedly spreading the international poison be exterminated, another is in "Eastern Orientation or Eastern Politics" where Hitler talks about the Lebensraum program in Eastern Europe he mentions about the "Russian State" (the term he used to describe the USSR/Soviet Union) where he notes about Bolshevism/Communism taking away the intellecual class that guranteed its existence however he goes on saying that the political organization of Russia/USSR/Soviet Union did not result from any genuine political organizing abilities but it was rather a marvelous example of the state organizing abilities found in a Germanic element of an inferior he goes on sayingg that the empire in the East (again the USSR) is ripe for collapse and that the end of "Jewish rule" in Russia will be the end of that country as a state and that as nationalists (aka Nazis) they have been destined to witness this catatrosphe which would confirm their racial folkish theory and the last one is "Self Defense as Right" where Hitler goes on saying that at the beginning or during World War I if 12,000 to 15,000 of these quote unquote "Hebrew corrupters" (taken from the German version's "Hebraischen Volksverderber") had been held under poison gas then the efforts of Germans on the war front would have supposedly not been in vain and repeats the same sentiments again and getting angry at the German government allowing them to get involved in the war effort.

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That is how you can counter Holocaust denial by including these quotes from the man who started it all.