Despite the best efforts of The Friends of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Holocaust Historiography Project is still on-line. On December 12, 2005, we received word from our previous hosting service that The Friends had lodged a "hate" complaint against our site. What a shame The Friends didn't contact us directly. What a shame The Friends couldn't point out a single error in fact or conclusion. Perhaps The Friends claim to have found hate on this site because that is what they brought with them. As with so many other such groups, with this action The Friends have shown themselves to be intellectually cowardly and morally bankrupt on the Holocaust.
Here's the message sent by our previous web hosting company:
"We have been contacted by Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies regarding the content of the website www.historiography-project.org. Upon our investigation we find that the content contained on your website is offensive to the community due to its Holocaust denial nature and for this reason we are unable to continue offering web hosting services for it."
Usually when you receive a message such as this, it's a done deal -- you can protest, but it will do you no good. That's what happened in this case, too. We pointed out the moral and intellectual fraud inherent in such a complaint. We pointed out that there is no "Holocaust denial" material on this web site. We even pointed out that when people don't stand up for freedom of speech, they will soon find they have none. We had our attorney write to them, and some select friends. There was no response from our previous host, and the site was shut down within hours of the notification.
Fortunately, we were able to use those hours to obtain temporary alternate hosting. By the next day, we had secured more permanent hosting arrangements.
So, we're now with a new web hosting company, and we're setting up "mirrors" (copies of the website) with various servers around the world, with fast switching amongst servers. We should be less exposed to this type of censorship in the future, and should it happen again, we will be able to respond more quickly, with even less service outage than this time.
You may notice a bug here or there as we transition from the old host to the new. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience, but at least the material is all still here, and still available.