Nizkor Project
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- See Nizkor for other organizations with a similar name.
The Nizkor Project (Hebrew: נִזְכּוֹר we will remember) is an ongoing Internet-based project run by Ken McVay which is dedicated to countering Holocaust denial. It was founded by McVay as a central Web-based archive for the large numbers of documents made publicly available by the users of the newsgroup alt.revisionism.
The site also archives numerous postings made to the newsgroup since the early 1990s. It does not archive every single posting ever made to the newsgroup; rather, the maintainers of the web site have selected various messages for display that are seen as presenting factual information about the Holocaust; or, in the case of some posters, about the authors of the messages themselves. In addition to providing an extensive archive of documents regarding the Holocaust, the Nizkor Project also seeks to expose the activities of Holocaust deniers themselves. Based on the postings to the newsgroup over the years, it has compiled extensive writings from self-proclaimed revisionists, including David Irving, Ernst Zündel, Michael A. Hoffman II, and others. Several regular pro-revisionist posters to the newsgroups have earned reputations as persistent Internet-based kooks, and a number of their writings are also stored at the Nizkor Project.
Among the various pieces of information stored at Nizkor is a sound recording of an answering machine message allegedly made by white supremacist Tom Metzger, encouraging various individuals to "take action" against "Zinkor [sic] on the Internet." According to the Ottawa Citizen in 1996, McVay has "so many on-line death threats that he refuses to give out his address."
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[edit] Praise
The Nizkor Project has been widely cited among scholars and researchers as a prime source of information on various hate groups. It has been cited by USA Today, the Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, The Guardian, and by the American Journal of International Law, among many sources.[citation needed]
[edit] Criticisms
Some Internet authors associated with Holocaust denial and prominently featured in the Nizkor archives, such as Matt Giwer, have publicly denied the authenticity of the writings hosted by the Nizkor archives. [1] However, other newsgroup archives (such as Google) have been used to authenticate these messages.
Numerous pro-denial Web sites and spokespersons have made repeated accusations against McVay, challenging his neutrality and making a large number of personal attacks against him. The Nizkor web site has been accused by revisionists and Neo-Nazi Web sites as being funded by Israel and other Zionist sources, though McVay consistently denies these charges. He states that the Nizkor Project is funded strictly through donations from the general public, as well as his own personal finances. [2]
In the late 1990s, the Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized the Nizkor Project for increasing the visibility of hate groups and Holocaust deniers, even as it sought to debunk them. This debate between free speech advocates such as McVay and those who favored hate crime laws continued throughout the late 1990s, but has mostly been resolved. In 1996, McVay spoke out against Internet hate crime laws in Canada in front of the Canadian Parliament, stating that it is better to address the false claims of Holocaust deniers, rather than to censor them.[3]
