The fact that you have to make it illegal to express a skeptical viewpoint on the subject is curious. In several countries to question it publicly can get you a fine or in jail.
One can understand the desire to hold up the idea, because if it turned out that WW 2 was really fought to justify the founding of Israel--a superstitious project , which has now led to various wars--and the destruction of a few countries (Libya, Syria, Iraq), million or more dead, the worse migration of people since the 1940s, then it is most serious indeed. Imagine if it turned out that as much or MORE Germans died at Dresden or Japanese in Tokyo and Hiroshima by allied bombing than Jews in concentration camps.
It would explain this sort of view:
In 59 BC the Roman statesman Cicero criticized Jewish "clannishness" and "influence in the assemblies." In the second century AD Celsus, one of Rome's great medical writers, wrote that Jews "pride themselves in possessing superior wisdom and disdain for the company of other men." Philostratus, an ancient Greek author, believed that Jews "have long since risen against humanity itself. They are men who have devised a misanthropic life, who share neither food nor drink with others." (Cf. Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, I, iii.) The great Roman historian Tacitus (A.D. 56-120) declared that "the Jews are extremely loyal toward one another, and are always ready to show compassion [for their fellow Jews], but toward other people they feel only hate and enmity"
Voltaire(addressing Jews): "You seem to be the maddest of the lot. The Kaffirs, the Hottentots, the Negroes of Guinea are much more reasonable and more honest people than your ancestors, the Jews. You have surpassed all nations in impertinent fables, in bad conduct, and in barbarism. You deserved to be punished, for this is your destiny....[The Jewish nation] dares spread an irreconcilable hatred against all nations; it revolts against all its masters. Always superstitious, always avid of the well-being enjoyed by others, always barbarous, crawling in misfortune, and insolent in prosperity. Here are what were the Jews in the eyes of the Greeks and the Romans who could read their books....I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people [Jews] would not some day become deadly to the human race."
Mark Twain: "We have all thoughtfully - or unthoughtfully - read the pathetic story of the years of plenty and the years of famine in Egypt, and how Joseph, with that opportunity, made a corner in broken hearts, and the crusts of the poor, and human liberty - a corner whereby he took a nation's money all away, to the last penny; took a nation's livestock all away, to the last hoof; took a nation's land away, to the last acre; then took the nation itself, buying it for bread, man by man, woman by woman, child by child, till all were slaves;...Is it presumable that the eye of Egypt was upon Joseph the foreign Jew all this time? I think it likely. Was it friendly? We must doubt it. Was Joseph establishing a character for his race which would survive long in Egypt? and in time would his name come to be familiarly used to express that character - like Shylock's? It is hardly to be doubted."
HG Wells: "Almost every community with which the orthodox Jews have come into contact has sooner or later developed and acted upon that conspiracy idea. A careful reading of the Bible does nothing to correct it; there indeed you have the conspiracy plain and clear. It is not simply the defensive conspiracy of a nice harmless people anxious to keep up their dear, quaint old customs that we are dealing with. It is an aggressive and vindictive conspiracy. People are apt to catch up and repeat phrases about the nobility of the Book of Isaiah on the strength of a few chance quotations torn from their context. But let the reader take that book and read it for himself straightforwardly, and note the setting of these fragments. Much of it is ferocious; extraordinarily like the rantings of some Nazi propagandist. The best the poor Gentile can expect is to play the part of a Gibeonite a hewer of wood and a drawer of water for the restored elect. It is upon that and the like matter that the children of the orthodox have been fed. It is undeniable. There are the books for everyone to read. It is not tolerance but stupidity to shut our eyes to their quality."
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