>Denial, in my book, is less worriesome than deliberate violations of human rights. Denial, is a too complex phenonima to label it as evil. Denial, often is done out of ignorance or shame. As long as measurement are taken such events cannot happen again, I can live with denial, even considering how painfull that could be to others.

The bad side of denial is that it is the seed of the next one. The descendants of the victims get one version of the history passed on to them by the survivors, and another one from official sources, and there you have a potential conflict in the future. The number of families who don't know where their members are buried, the promises to revenge... denial can keep a lid on that for a while, but as soon as the lid cracks, steam bursts.

Happened in SFRY. The Croatian quisling state was sort of pardoned after the war, despite the apparent genocide it performed (the plan to kill one third of Croatian Serbs, expel another and convert the remaining third to Catholicism was in full swing; concentration camps too), because it was dissolved and replaced with the people's republic. After the breakup of Yugoslavia some of the new politicians credited this republic as a welcome way of being on the winning side after the war. The initial incidents which actually sparked the Croatian war of 1991 were all related to digging out the pits where the victims of 1941 were buried, and which were just covered by the communists - who have organized a sort of denial. Not as much as "it didn't happen", but rather "Serbian chetniks slaughtered too", "but there was a Moslem SS division too", "everybody did something, we can't go around courtmartialing forever", "let's just forget this and never have a fratricidal war again"... and so it worked for some forty years. Had it worked for twenty more, by now we'd have practically anybody who remembered and as long as neither side would willingly pick old wounds, it would have worked.

But it didn't.

>I don't know enough about the armenian genocide, but I know enough about the holocaust. Last year on the plane, I was chatting with a woman living in the US, but originating from Iran (I can tell you that was an interesting conversation). She was not entirely denying the holocaust, but refused to believe that 6 million jews were killed during the holocaust. Well, what to say, she is living in an entire different world than I am and she was raised under controlled media, so how should she know? (There is something to be said for that the media is controlled in the US as well though).
>
>In short. Was I suprised? No. Should I worry about this? not really, as long as this does not happen again.

There's something to the story about "six million Jews and nobody else" story that makes it sound like propaganda. While I believe most of it (having spoken with some of our survivors), the spin it is given, and the reduction to soundbites, exclusion of others who were in the same concentration camps from the story... makes it sound less plausible. Bad packaging can get any truth under doubt, seen that many times.