Louis Begley's novel "Wartime Lies" provides the point of departure for this discussion of the special merits and demerits of fiction and the law in dealing with the Holocaust. There is a special irony, it is suggested, in Holocaust denial being criminalised in Germany, the country which was responsible for it. Conclusion: novels like "Wartime Lies" justify themselves as works of fiction while implicitly drawing attention to official historical distortions and exclusions.