Orac at Respectful Insolence has alerted the blogosphere to a very disturbing incident: arsonists recently targeted the offices of the Holocaust History Project:

In the early hours of March 6, 2006, a fire broke out at a warehouse complex near San Antonio International Airport, causing extensive damage to the offices of The Holocaust History Project (THHP), an organization that has been, for the last ten years, in the forefront of confronting Holocaust denial online, in addition to providing educational materials to students throughout the world. Arson investigators now have confirmed that the fire was intentionally set and are continuing their investigation.

It was just the latest in a series of attacks with the apparent intent to silence THHP. For the past 18 months, the THHP website has been under an unprecedented Distributed Denial of Service attack. This cyber attack began on September 11, 2004, and is being carried out by a specially modified version of the MyDoom computer worm, programmed to target the THHP web server. See the THHP statement:

http://www.holocaust-history.org/denial/denial-of-service.shtml

Harry Mazal, the Director of THHP said, "We have been able to defend our work against these cyber attackers. They tried, but couldn't shut us down. We have strong indications that this arson is the next step in a series of attacks against our educational and scholarly work. Although the fire caused significant damage to our offices, there is no way we will be silenced. Our web site has not been affected, and our work will continue."

Dean Esmay has more, (along with some interesting background on Nazis in Chicago), and he's supplied a button which anyone can use who wants to link to the Holocaust History Project, which I'm proud to use here.

As Dean says, "if we deny that certain events happened, we make it easier for them to happen again."

I suspect that the arsonists would love to see the Holocaust happen again.

It's worth a reminder that the Holocaust didn't start with the gas chambers; it started with broken windows, and arson.

MORE: Not that I'd compare it with Holocaust denial, but idiocy like this makes my blood boil:

Charles Smith has been marketing shirts that read, "I (heart) Wal-ocaust" T-shirts. Wal-Mart filed a cease-and-desist order in an attempt to make him stop printing the shirts.

The company said Smith is engaging in trademark infringement. It has threatened to sue Smith if he continues to display the logos on his Web site and to print them on his products.

The 48-year-old Smith is a computer repairman and said he has no deep connection to the company. But he claims using the logos is a free speech issue.

Smith said he came up with his anti-Wal-Mart logo after conversations with a customer and an employee who both had bad experiences with the retailer.

Such Holocaust trivialization is despicable. (The fact that the First Amendment permits it is no reason to give its perpetrators a pass.)