A Holocaust denier

Monday, Feb. 2, 2009 | 2:07 a.m.

Pope Benedict XVI last week restored four excommunicated bishops, members of an ultraconservative sect, in an attempt to ease a rift with church traditionalists. In doing so, he created another problem: One of the bishops, Richard Williamson, is an outspoken Holocaust denier.

In a television interview aired last week, Williamson said “the historical evidence” did not show that millions of Jews during World War II were “deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler.”

Told he had been called an anti-Semite because of his Holocaust denial, Williamson dismissed the charge and said, “If anti-Semitism is bad, it’s against truth. If something is true, it’s not bad. This is a question of historical truth.”

Williamson said there had been “a huge exploitation” of the Holocaust, adding that German guilt led the country to pay out “billions and billions” in compensation.

This is outrageous. The well-documented historical truth is clear: Hitler’s Nazi government and its collaborators methodically murdered 6 million Jews. Additionally, Nazis killed millions more who were undesirable in Hitler’s view.

Williamson’s comments have caused a wave of righteous anger to ripple through the world. Israel’s chief rabbinate severed ties with the Vatican and canceled a meeting set for March.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, a Nazi concentration camp survivor, said Holocaust denial is “the most vulgar aspect of anti-Semitism.”

After Williamson’s views were widely distributed, the pope, whose predecessor called anti-Semitism a “sin against God and humanity,” said he stood in “full and indisputable solidarity” with Jews. He also reiterated the Roman Catholic teaching against anti-Semitism.

Williamson’s views are intolerable and must be condemned. His anti-Semitic views, easily found on the Internet, are in line with the beliefs that led to the Holocaust. It’s outrageous that he was restored.

The world cannot forget the Holocaust or deny it. It must stay in memory so future generations can fight to prevent such an evil from happening again.