"Nie Wieder," the engraved letters proclaim in different languages. The letters, stark on a large, black monument in front of the former cafeteria at Dachau that now houses prisoners' ghosts, challenge future generations to make sure the Holocaust never happens again.

But some have forgotten and have become as stony as the Dachau monument in their attempts to deny the tragic deaths of millions -- they call themselves revisionists. They either claim the Holocaust never happened -- or like Bradley Smith, director of the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust in California -- challenge the existence of gas chambers in Nazi Germany.

Tell Filip Mueller there were no gas chambers. Mueller considered suicide because he couldn't stand life in a camp anymore. He changed his mind when another prisoner told him his decision to die wouldn't save anyone.

"I managed to mingle with the pushing and shoving crowd of people who were being driven into the gas chamber . . . Parents were hugging their children so violently that it almost broke my heart," Mueller recalled.

Smith ignores such personal accounts and graphic descriptions of "trucks full of naked, quivering rag-doll humans piled up high, fresh out of gas chambers and carted to the crematoria."

But he insists he needs better proof, saying, "If there were no gas chambers, what was the Holocaust?"

Aside from the gassings, the Holocaust was disease, starvation, shootings, hangings, beatings, inhumane medical experiments and horrendous living conditions. But Smith does not hear.

He should be the one providing us with proof that the gas chambers did not exist in the Holocaust. Why should we be the ones providing "proof" that is already well-documented? Mr. Smith, the Holocaust happened.

A former prisoner in Auschwitz recalled being told, "You are a Jew. You are no longer a part of the human race." Prisoners were dehumanized. They starved until they were only bones. The tatoos on their arms reduced them to mere numbers. And the experience often killed their faith in God.

Smith and his blind followers are so wrapped up in their nitpicking to find proof the Holocaust wasn't as bad as people say it was, that they overlook the very real destruction. Happy Valley may seem detatched from World War II Germany, but stories can be heard from survivors and their descendants. At Pattee, a keyword search of "Holocaust" retrieves 538 entries.

Even the Nazis describe the very chambers Smith questions. "One did not need guards to drive them into the gas chambers; they simply went in, because they assumed that they would shower there, and instead of the water, we turned on poison gas. It went very quickly."

We need the lessons of the past to remember and teach those in the future what actually happened during the Holocaust. We need them so we can prevent it from ever happening again.