Holocaust

Is Hungary preparing to prosecute "lifelong Nazi" George Soros? No, that's not true: The claim, posted by a prolific publisher of fake news, is based on a single anonymous source. It repeats the oft-debunked claim that financier and philanthropist Soros was a Nazi. In fact, Soros, who is Jewish, lived through the Nazi occupation of Hungary in 1944-45, when he…

Was Adolf Hitler, the head of the Nazi Party and dictator of Germany, actually black and does this photo prove it? No, that's not true: This picture is a color photo converted into black and white from an episode of a TV sitcom called "Community." The claim appeared on Instagram on December 23, 2022. It said: The more you know…

Do people in Belgium honor King Leopold II by making chocolates and cookies in the form of human hands, representing the severed limbs of Congolese people and children who were brutally punished or killed in the colonial era for not meeting a quota for rubber production? No, that's not true: The sweets called Antwerp Handjes were first introduced in 1934…

Is it impossible that Nazi Germany used a gaseous form of hydrogen cyanide, also known as Zyklon B, to commit mass murder in World War II concentration camps because the compound is "air soluble" and conditions in gas chambers "would not allow for sufficient concentrations of gas to form"? No, that's not true: A chemistry professor told Lead Stories that…

Does the repeated use of the figure 6 million in pre-World War II American newspaper reports about the world's Jewish communities prove there was no Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews are estimated to have died? No, that's not true: The research design behind the claim is deeply flawed: The video creators reached their conclusion by searching for a single…

Does a low serial number of the Nazi concentration camp tattoo disprove the scale of the Holocaust? No, that's not true: Those serial numbers are irrelevant to estimating the death toll among the Jewish population because most of the victims were killed without getting a tattoo. The claim appeared on Instagram on November 30, 2022. The entry did not have…

Did former President Ronald Reagan deny that 6 million Jewish people were killed in concentration camps during World War II? No, that's not true: There is missing context to this video. A transcript of this event shows that Reagan is answering a question about the actions of the leader of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The implied claim appeared…

Was "even the media" prosecuted during the 1945-46 Nuremberg trials of Nazi Germany's leadership and "put to death for lying to the public"? No, that's not true: This claim misrepresents the purpose of these historical legal proceedings, which set a precedent for holding individuals accountable for crimes against humanity. As the archives show, even those defendants who had a history…

Did Adolf Hitler say that even in his death he would start World War 3? No, that's not true: This is a recycled conspiracy theory, and multiple historians told Lead Stories it didn't happen. Also, contrary to the claim's suggestion, Hitler and his Nazi regime were racist toward African Germans -- primarily based on skin color. The claim appeared in…

Does Amazon's digital assistant Alexa know that the main purpose of spraying "chemtrails" is to reduce the human population on Earth? No, that's not true: Alexa can recite information found in internet search results from Microsoft's Bing or recite answers provided by people participating in a crowdsourced program called "Alexa Answers." The quality of the answers can vary depending on…