Pernicious UK Holocaust Education Discontinuation Hoax continues

Last spring someone started a vicious, cruel, tasteless and pointless hoax chain letter that claimed falsely that the UK had discontinued Holocaust Education. A misunderstanding was conceivable, because of a sensationalist journal article. But the hoaxer had attached the falsehood to a memorial letter about the Holocaust.

See: Holocaust Education in UK: Clarifying rumors and hoaxes

The Holocaust hoax died down, but now it has been revived. Today I got yet another of these e-mails, with an addition. The story about Eisenhower is apparently true, but the claim that the UK has stopped teaching about the Holocaust is groundless.

The first part of the e-mail is below. To my mind, there is an element of mental derangement evidenced in sending a fake message "in memoriam" for Holocaust victims. Note that the message claims that "this week" the UK removed Holocaust education from its curriculum. The report about Holocaust education that sparked the rumor was published in April 2007. It related to a study of curriculum changes done over a longer period. Nobody who actually read the report (see here ) could have understood that the changes had taken place "this week."

Please do not circulate these or any other hoax emails. Spreading lies is not "activism." Spreading lies does not help any cause - it hurts it. Do not forward any chain letters until you have checked, using a search engine, that the information is true. Just type a few words from the message in any search engine and add the word "hoax."

If you get any such chain letters, please inform the people who sent them that they are spreading falsehoods and discredited their own cause.

The person who added their own twist to the hoax (see "Modified by") has apologized. Therefore, I removed his name. He didn't know it was a hoax as he got it from someone he trusted, he said. Like AIDs and other "social diseases," hoax letters and viruses are spread by people you trust.

Ami Isseroff


Subject: MUST TAKE NOTE - UK removes Holocaust (Modified by XXXX)


Subject: UK removes Holocaust



UK removes Holocaust


It is a matter of history that when
Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General
Dwight Eisenhower, found the victims of the death
camps he ordered all possible photographs to be
taken, and for the German people from surrounding
villages to be ushered through the camps and even
made to bury the dead.

He did this because he said in words to
this effect: "Get it all on record now - get the
films - get the witnesses - because somewhere down
the track of history some bastard will get up and
say that this never happened"

"All that is necessary for the triumph
of evil is for good men to do nothing."

Edmund Burke

In Memorium

This week, the UK removed The Holocaust
from its school curriculum because it "offended" the
Muslim population which claims it never occurred.
This is a frightening portent of the fear that is
gripping the world and how easily each country is
giving in to it.

It is now more than 60 years after the
Second World War in Europe ended.

This e-mail is being sent as a memorial
chain, in memory of the 6 million Jews,

20 million Russians,

10 million Christians

and 1,900 Catholic priests

who were murdered, massacred, raped,
burned, starved and humiliated while the German and
Russian peoples looked the other way!
....