By Dr Bertrand Ramcharan
The author previously performed the functions of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
I have been to the International Nuremberg Academy and I have spoken in the very room where perpetrators of the Holocaust were tried and sentenced. It is hallowed ground for those who believe in the international protection and defence of human rights.
Rafael Lemkin, a Polish refugee, coined the term ‘genocide’ and argued for the recognition of the international crime of genocide because of the events of the Holocaust. He is considered the father of the Genocide Convention. I have met Holocaust survivors and I have witnessed their pain. I was present at UN Headquarters when the late Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate, opened an exhibit of hair and tooth, shoes, and other artefacts of pain from concentration camps.
Every year on 27 January, the international community comes together to commemorate the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This Day was chosen by the United Nations General Assembly to mark the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp in 1945.
In 2026, the theme “Holocaust Remembrance for Dignity and Human Rights” guided United Nations Holocaust remembrance and education. According to the UN, Remembrance dignifies the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. It keeps alive their memories of the communities and traditions and loved ones the Nazis sought to erase.
A UN release on the occasion stated: “The Holocaust warns us of the deadly consequences of antisemitism and hatred, dehumanization and apathy left unchallenged. Over eighty years after the Holocaust, we witness daily assaults on our fellow global citizens. Antisemitism and hatred surge. Denial and distortion of the Holocaust persist. Remembrance of the Holocaust defies denial and distortion, rejects falsehoods, confronts hatred, and insists on the humanity of the victims. “
The defence of universal rights, the UN release added, is essential for sustainable peace and lies at the heart of the United Nations: “In remembering the victims of the Holocaust, we affirm our shared humanity and pledge to defend the dignity and human rights of all.”
Why, in the light of the foregoing, would Guyana’s Government newspaper, the Guyana Chronicle, choose to run a series of offensive leading articles indulging in painful Holocaust denial and anti-semitism? What’s going on here? Who is behind this? Why did the Editor of the paper run such articles? Is the President, the Government at risk of being dubbed a Holocaust-denier, wittingly or unwittingly?
On 8 August, 2026, the Guyana Chronicle, the Government-run newspaper, carried an article by its daily correspondent, a self-avowed close friend of the President, with the title “There is no printed document on Hitler’s order to kill Jews”. The article proceeded to make the following twelve points:
1. Hundreds of talents from fashion, films, music, literature and academia have been destroyed for raising doubts about Jewish accounts of Nazi Germany and even ‘questioning anything questionable about Jewish attitudes to the world.’
2. Perhaps the most crucified talent in this context is British historian, David Irving. ‘One of the brightest historians in the world in the second half of the 20th century, this man was virtually destroyed by the European establishment and the Western media for raising doubts about the pantheon of facts about the Holocaust.’
3. Two points among the many that Irving raised still resonate because they need to be investigated. One is that Germany simply did not have the infrastructural facilities to gas and bury six million Jews plus a few million non-Jews. Irving said there is no evidence in Germany of such large-scale destruction and none was ever found.
4. The second point Irving asked was: show me one, just one printed document whereby Hitler ordered what Western countries called the Final Solution. The Final Solution is supposed to be a Nazi plan to finally get rid of European Jews. The fact is that to date, there has been no discovery of any document where Hitler ordered the killing of any Jew.
5. Hitler’s confidential secretary Traudle Junge, wrote in her memoir that she cannot recall any instance where she had to type a memo from Hitler about ordering the death of any Jew. She argued that he may have done that but it never came to her desk.
6. Allegedly, a conference was held at Wannsee in Nazi Germany to decide on the fate of Jews. “But there are no minutes of that conference and no evidence of any of the leaders of the Nazi Government in attendance.”
7. “It is 79 years since the Western powers (and Russia, then known as the USSR) invaded Germany and took complete control over its archives. After 79 years, researchers from around the world cannot publish the minutes of the Wannsee conference.”
8. If the Final Solution was planned at Wannsee, then why was no high-level Nazi policy-maker present? It could not have been a government decision and yet no government minister was present. The first 10 ministers in terms of power after Hitler were not at Wannsee.
9. It is 79 years since the Western powers took complete control of all the papers of the Nazi government, yet to date there isn’t even a short memo from Germany about the need to kill European Jews. There isn’t even a one-paragraph memo authored by Hitler, ordering the killing of any Jew.
10. “What is the explanation? For 79 years, the countries (except the USSR) that defeated Nazi Germany have described for the world what that government had done and what it was like. There is no alternative source except David Irving and look what Europe did to him. As it stands today, no human in any European country can pen even one paragraph of the arguments in this column here. Two sanctions face them – employment termination or criminal charge.”
11. In the UK and France, you can justify those countries’ enslavement of other races (slavery) and their anti-civilisational colonial massacre of the non-White races (Germany apologised to Namibia for committing genocide against) but you cannot write even one paragraph in a book, journal or newspaper or say on television or social media that the Holocaust was exaggerated. It is the law in every European country and in Canada that makes it criminal to make such a statement. The charge is termed Holocaust denial and Dr Irving was jailed in Austria for taking such a position.
12. “These are the countries that every day the past 60 years since the colonies got independence, that lecture the Global South on democracy, free expression and freedom of the press. I make no apology for saying that Dr. David Irving has serious points in his favour on his critiques of the exaggeration of the Holocaust. Of course, historians in the Global South have no interest in questioning the West’s account of the Nazi regime. They have more relevant research topics to pursue.”
Another such article, by the same author, was published in the Guyana Chronicle on 5 September, 2026. It argued that “The largest lacuna in world history is why the German Government hounded down the Jewish race. The world has no analysis from the German side about this important European detail and perhaps will never have it. Which academic from which country is going to offer a critique of the Jewish race in 19th and 20th century Germany.”
The article has numerous other statements that give cause for deep concern, including the following: “I want to emphasize my point – the present Israel government and its armed forces are crueler than anything the world has seen under the Nazi Government”. How could a professed historian assert such blatant falsehoods?
The articles above, whose words we have recounted as written, and several others of its kind, carry the following disclaimer: “The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.” They do not necessarily reflect the position of the Government’s newspaper. But they might they be interpreted as doing so? The question is: Do they?
The author of the article is a self-avowed friend and confidant of the President of Guyana. When the President was under pressure recently to reveal the title and circumstances of his establishment of a lucrative farm (Farmgate) he chose the author of the article exclusively to explain the circumstances of his ownership and operation of the farm.
The author of the article can write – and does write – any obscenity he chooses without any editorial control whatsoever. He has written of Guyana’s world-class economist and professor that he is a ‘low-life’. He has written to one Guyana’s former Parliamentarians, now in his nineties, ‘Go to hell’. He denounces the claims of a Guyanese-descendent that he is no Guyanese. Every limit of decency and judgement is violated.
And now there are these vile denials of the Holocaust, written in the Government newspaper and blatant Anti-Semitism. Do the President and the Government, realize that they are at risk of self-branding themselves as Holocaust deniers and Anti-Semitic? Some of the international websites on these matters are already inscribing interrogation marks on the policies of the Government of Guyana on these matters.
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