TEL AVIV – A former parliamentary candidate from Canada’s Green Party has sparked outrage for releasing a video claiming that the Holocaust was a “six million lie” that never happened.
In the video above, entitled “Sorry Mom, I was wrong about the Holocaust,” Monika Schaefer refers to the Holocaust as “the biggest and most pernicious, persistent lie in all of history.”
Schaefer, who opens the video by playing the violin, says she came to the realization that the Holocaust “never happened” in 2014. While she acknowledges that there were detention camps, she categorically denies the existence of death camps and gas chambers, and further claims that prisoners in the work camps were treated reasonably well.
“The prisoners of the camps were being kept as healthy and as well fed as was possible in those terrible war years. They needed to be kept healthy. How else could they perform the work? It was war, and so the camps were basically armaments factories. And how much sense does it make, by the way, to have a hospital in a death camp?” says Schaefer.
“There were no gas chambers there. The only gas that was used was to get rid of the lice! Lice carried typhus and typhus was a deadly and rampant disease. So they had to delouse the clothing to keep the people healthy,” she continues.
In response, the Green Party of Canada issued a statement Friday in which it made clear it condemns Schaefer’s comments “in the strongest possible terms.”
“Monika Schaefer’s comments denying the Holocaust are outrageous and shocking. Ms. Schaefer has no standing within the Green Party of Canada, and her views are exclusively her own,” said Emily McMillan, Executive Director of the Green Party of Canada.
“In light of Ms. Schaefer’s untrue statements made in a recent online video, we will be initiating the process to terminate her membership with the Green Party of Canada at the earliest possible opportunity,” McMillan added.
Many commenters on Schaefer’s YouTube video supported her claims, calling her “brave” for “speaking the truth.”
However some, like Ken Kuzminski, who claims to have been friends with Schaefer until seeing her video, called it “a hate crime” that “should be investigated as such.”
In a statement, the local chapter of B’nai Brith said it regards Schaefer’s imminent expulsion as a positive first step towards restoring the Green Party’s troubled relationship with the Canadian Jewish community due to its support for anti-Israel resolutions, the Canadian Jewish News reported.
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