The Pope has ordered Bishop Williamson to recant and Jewish groups from Berlin to Jerusalem, including Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, are settling down. But the larger question of how best to deal with those who deny the Holocaust remains.
Of course, all denials of the Holocaust are factually wrong and morally repugnant. But simply hiding behind the claim that any form of engagement with those who deny the Holocaust inappropriately dignifies the denier, an often heard claim, is about as smart as an ostrich burying its head in the ground and thinking it’s nighttime. The problem doesn’t go away just because we don’t deal with it. Not to mention that anyone who really denies the Holocaust is not worrying about the approval of the rest of the world, which knows that it happened.
Rather than representing the moral high ground as claimed by those who support this approach, a total ban on engagement with deniers is a convenient way to ignore the real challenge of engaging people with ugly views. And those are usually the most important people to engage. The real choice one has to make is which deniers to ignore and which to engage.

Rather than a single policy either prohibiting or sanctioning all interaction with Holocaust deniers, we need principles to guide our decision making processes. Those who really care about Holocaust memory should ask a number of questions before making their decision. First, what might be achieved by engaging the denier in question? Second, what is the cost of not engaging them? Third, in what context will the engagement occur? Fourth, will the engagement in question create the impression among those not directly engaged, that the two views are equally valid?
If the answers to the questions above are always “nothing”, “none”, “it does not matter” and “it always does” respectively, then rest assured that the one giving those answers cares more about maintaining their own sense of moral superiority than they do about remembering the Shoah. It might make them feel good, but accomplishes little else.
Nobody ever lost their integrity by choosing to speak with another person. Integrity is lost not because of those with whom we speak, but when the price of entering the conversation is the sacrifice of those truths and values we hold most dear. I would not, for example, concede that the Holocaust might not have happened in order to speak with someone who believes it did not. I would however, under the proper circumstances, make a genuine effort to understand how someone came to hold those views and invite them to consider alternatives.
In my experience, many Holocaust deniers have complex reasons underpinning their position. I have found that with the willingness to listen to a few rounds of really twisted history, one comes to the real reasons they deny the fact of the Holocaust. And when the conversation turns to those deeper reasons, real progress can be made.
In fact, under the proper circumstances, I would welcome the opportunity to have precisely that conversation with either President Amadenijad or Bishop Williamson. Why? First, because the stakes warrant the discomfort I would experience and second, because I imagine that it would be just a complicated for them to wrestle with my views.
Mostly though, I would engage them because the only thing which is certain if we do not engage each other is that nothing will change. And that is far more problematic than any conversation we might have.