Holocaust survivors urge Facebook to remove denial posts

Holocaust survivors are lending their voices to a campaign targeting Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg, urging him to take action to remove denial of the Nazi genocide from the social media site.

Coordinated by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, the #NoDenyingIt campaign launched Wednesday uses Facebook itself to make the survivors' entreaties to Zuckerberg heard with one video per day being posted urging him to remove Holocaust denying groups, pages and posts as hate speech.

Facebook says it already takes down Holocaust denial posts in countries where it is illegal and elsewhere removes "any post that celebrates, defends, or attempts to justify the Holocaust."

The campaign comes as Zuckerberg went before Congress as part of a U.S. House investigation into Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apples of dominance in industry.

The first #NoDenyingIt video features many Holocaust survivors, including Pinchas Gutter, making direct appeals to Zuckerberg.

"Mark, There is no denying it. The Holocaust was real," Gutter says in the video.

Lisa Kaplan, Founder of Alethea Group, which works to stop misinformation on the web, says Facebook's reluctance to take down Holocaust denial posts is a least partially for financial reasons.

"The financial bottom line likely comes into play any time you're having shareable content, you're keeping people on the platform more and that sharable content isn't always morally sound," said Kaplan.

In an interview with Associated Press, Holocaust survivor Eva Szepesi talked about how important it is that younger generations know what happened in World War II.

"This is my story, and it must not be denied. That's why I wanted this so much, because of the young people and the next generation, so that they know what happened, what can happen again. They are not responsible for what happened then, but they are responsible for the future. And that's why it would be nice if Mr. Zuckerberg would remove these denials from Facebook," said Szepesi.

Representatives from the Claims Conference said they initially had only planned to collect a few videos but that reception among survivors has been so strong that they now expect as many as 50 videos.