Unintentional ignorance or just plain stupidity?

I actually HAVE been unfortunate enough to meet ppl like this and I have to tell you it took EVERYTHING I HAD to NOT pop them right in the mouth...I have such a low tolerance for ppl like that if any tolerance at all....I have to wonder why they feel and believe the way they do..I mean is it a learned attitude? or are they REALLY that unintelligent OR is it denial that some suggest...Mindboggling to say the least and how in the hell do ppl like that function in society without getting slapped around on a regular basis??

Not surprised. This isn't the first time, and won't be the last in my view. For some, its done for political purposes in order to excuse current or future conduct. For others its done out of real hatred for groups in question. There are even those who actually don't know (slim chances, but it does happen... especially with "refined" cirriculums or something else). Even with this its still hard to understand how someone could not know about these events. And personally, I'm with you on the shock of the person in question. Some of those remarks are rather disturbing.

Well I don’t really know whether I have encountered anybody like this coz you know idiocy, selective amnesia, lunacy, ignorance etc all depend on individual’s reactions to particular situations. But in your case I definitely believe that the person you are talking about is not illiterate, neither ignorant but definitely belongs to a certain group of people who formulate and believe their own interpretations of world events (however twisted and out-of-sync that may be). Knowing the history of Afro-Americans and their slave forefathers can be missed (maybe), but Hitler is still so new and raw! C.mon not even hundred years have passed! How can somebody forget/ignore the Holocaust if it’s not intentional?

I can honestly say I have never met anyone on that level before. It's sad that this person believed that the Holocaust was made up, how bad that Africans were mistreated, and that Hitler was misunderstood in his opinion. I grew up and currently live in the South and nobody thinks that way that I have met. That's really sad, and I credit you for just having to waste minutes of your time even talking to this person. I think it's more than just denial, it's just plain stupidity. This person needs to spend time with if they are still alive victims of the Holocaust. There's documentaries on US war ships bringing back to America, Jewish people that either escaped Hitler's wrath or already fleed from Germany. It's written that Africans were given no rights at all until after the Civil war and even again after the civil rights battle. I'm not proud of what took place in the South. I guess he doesn't believe that we mistreated the Orientals during WW2 either by putting them in placement camps.

I've never met one of those people personally but sometimes online. My grandpa personally liberated a holocaust camp in Germany (or his tank division not him all by himself). I come from more than 50% German ancestry and I'm guessing he's in denial because he is German. I don't know what its like over there but just being of partial German descent makes me feel real bad about the holocaust and embarrassed a little. I know some strong people of the Catholic faith who have the same problem of denial. I told them to watch a movie called Deliver us From Evil. They refuse to. They are good people but they are denial of how messed up the Catholic Church is all the way up to the Pope. I'm still Catholic but I never step inside a church anymore. I think people don't want to accept things sometimes because they're ashamed or embarrassed to accept the truth. So they continue to live in denial.