Holocaust "deniers"/revisionists don't claim that there weren't concentration camps, or deny that many Jews and non-Jews died in them.
They deny: That there was a systematic program of extermination of "undesirable" races called the Final Solution.
That execution gas chambers were used to kill Jews and Gypsies with Zyklon B(a widely used pesticide at the time) and engine exhaust*.
They further claim: That the Final Solution meant expulsion from Europe, just as the "Madagascar Solution" was a plan to expel Jews to Madagascar.
That bombing of German railroads which supplied the camps, and wartime conditions, caused epidemics and starvation which are the real cause of the death tolls in the camps (and thus the Allies actually killed those people you see in photos of the camps upon liberation).
That the death tolls for the holocaust are exaggerated, with the records kept by the Germans, and the post-war Red Cross figures, being more accurate. *Based largely on controversial research by Fred Leuchter, Germar Rudolf, Friedrich Paul Berg, and David Cole.
The reasons for their claims are: The belief that Israel uses the holocaust to gather sympathy for their cause in the Middle East, which leads to abuses against the Palestinians. Because they believe that many modern Germans have a guilt complex due to the focus on the holocaust in education over atrocities by other peoples. Because they want to promote, and push the boundaries of, freedom of speech, and the holocaust is a heavily censored subject. (Contrary to popular belief, most of the actual researchers behind holocaust denial are not neo-Nazis.)
The eyewitnesses don't really discourage holocaust denial because: Most of them only heard about gas chambers, and only a few would have seen them whether they existed or not.
People tend to fill holes in their memory with pre-existing themes that they've heard. So with the history of the concentration camps simplified down to gas chambers + starvation + Joseph Mengele, it's not hard to figure out which details get embellished. They have a profit and revenge motive to embellish their stories. An example of the unreliability of testimony is my namesake, Yankel Wiernik, who was cited as a source in Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews, although some of the things he claimed to have seen are physically impossible.
Also, Jesse Owens never slapped Hitler in the face. Hitler didn't shake his hand because he was told to stop shaking hands with the athletes, as it was against the rules.
Mostly to pus buttons . But anyways, the Holocaust is the only justification for Israel's existence. If there was no holocaust then Israel would have no basis for existence.
Holocaust is a targeted killing with a certain undefied but large body count. Bosnia was not a holocaust because the body count was too low. The various African conflicts, etc.
Malnutrition or disease are not executions so those deaths can't be tallied towards a holocaust. If a prisoner was shot trying to escape...again...not an execution. Any Jewish soldier that died....not an execution.....the numbers in general don't add up.
The whole thing was very tragic, but emotions need to be put asside...If the targeted executions don't reach a certain number...it's not a holocaust but just a genocide and Israel would have no justification of existing.
Source(s): Friedrich Paul Berg's www.nazigassings.com website. One Third of the Holocaust. The Giant With Feet of Clay, by Jurgen Graf. Preface to The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, by Professor Arthur R. Butz. A Year in Treblinka, by Yankel Wiernik. The revisionist websites www.codoh.com , www.codoh.com/bt, www.ihr.org , and www.vho.org