Survivors Read Mean Tweets From Depraved Holocaust Deniers

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Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/ClaimsConference

It can’t have been easy for Holocaust survivor Herbert Rubinstein to read aloud the words that a Holocaust denier posted online. “We have all been cheated, lied to, and exploited,” the post says. “The Holocaust did NOT happen the way it is written in our history books.” In no uncertain terms, Rubinstein sets the record straight. “That is a lie,” he says.

Ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day on May 6, several survivors are taking part in a powerful campaign seeking to address the ongoing spread of Holocaust denialism online by reading posts dismissing the real atrocities that they lived through. The #CancelHate campaign, organized by the Claims Conference, features a series of videos of survivors speaking the words of Holocaust denial and distortion that still proliferate on social media platforms—and debunking those smears with the testimony of their own lived experiences.

One of the survivors taking part is Hedi Argent. Born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1929, she was expelled from school the day after the Anschluss, Adolf Hitler’s annexation of Austria into a union with Nazi Germany. Soon she and her family would also be forced out of their home. Eventually, 17 of her family members would be murdered in the Holocaust.