Actor Robert Mitchum played in Winds of War and War and Remembrance. He also gets a mention in Denying the Holocaust: The growing assault on Truth and Memory, by Deborah Lipstadt:
“Echoes of Holocaust denial have also been heard from individuals who are not associated with extremist or overtly antisemitc groups. In an interview with Esquiremagazine in February 1983, Robert Mitchum, who played a leading role in the television production of Herman Wouk’s World War II saga, Winds of War and War andRemembrance, suggested that there was doubt about the Holocaust. Asked about the slaughter of six million Jews, he replied “So the Jews say.” The interviewer, incredulous, repeated Mitchum’s comment verbatim, “So the Jews say?” and Mitchum responded, “I don’t know. People dispute that.”
As it happens Mitchum’s mother was Norwegian. Now does this signify anything? Not at all, to indicate anything else would be racist. Which is why Kåre Willoch was accused of being an anti-Semite after commenting upon how President Obams’s ME policies were unlikely to change as his ME adviser was a jew.
Most Norwegians will understand the first example. When the second is equally understood people won’t be able to get away with comparing operation Cast Lead with the Warsaw ghetto any longer.
There will always be deniers of certain events in history. Some deny that there was an actual manned landing on the moon for example. You can’t get rid of those who propagate denial. What is more important is how certain events are embellished. Humans have a tendency of exaggerating events; there can be several interpretations of an event; some are accurate; sometimes these interpretations are embedded into the social consciouness, unfortunately some can be the wrong ones.
If the Holocaust or the moon landing are ficticious events, then why not deny that the American Civil War occurred? I see no one denying this great event in American history, yet much of it has been embellished. I do not deny that the Holocaust transpired. This event was far too great and significant in history. It would be like denying that the American Civil War ever occurred, or that the Second World War was only a skirmish. This sort of thinking is irrational.