To hear Khalif Mitchell try to explain it, his posts on social media, the posts a prominent Jewish group denounced as “divisive and hateful” and that earned him fines and rebukes from his employers in Canadian football, were borne from a genuine sense of curiosity.

Someone, he claimed, told him German people hate Jewish people.

“And so I asked a German person, ‘Does German people hate Jewish people?’” Mitchell, a defensive lineman with the Montreal Alouettes, said on Thursday. “And they said no.”

So he started looking into it, he said, and that led him to an online video, a self-described documentary titled “The greatest lie ever told – The Holocaust.” He posted it on Twitter earlier this month, linking to it more than once under his name, @TruthWillFree96.

On Thursday, having failed to get a response from the Alouettes, who signed Mitchell to a three-year contract in February, B’nai Brith Canada issued a news release. In it, chief executive Michael Mostyn described the posts as “shameful not just to Mr. Mitchell, but the entire Alouettes organization.”

A few hours later, the Canadian Football League announced Mitchell would be fined an undisclosed amount for violating its social media policy. The Alouettes announced they would fine the 30-year-old the “maximum amount allowable” under league rules.

Mitchell said he only became aware of the issue when his Twitter account was set alight with activity from the news release.

“I believe the Holocaust happened,” he said. “I believe that people died at the Holocaust. I believe that the Holocaust is an example of pure hatred, in its purest sense, on this earth, that we even know of — and that we should look into it and examine it for its authenticity, to understand how much hate could have been amassed on one people.”

He said he planned to reach out to B’nai Brith.

“My opinion is not that the Holocaust did not happen,” Mitchell said. “My opinion is that the Jews and the Germans don’t have a hate/blood relationship as being perpetuated in the media. And that is my view.”

Within the first minute of the so-called film, the narrator references the Holocaust as the “alleged murder” of six million Jews. What follows is a rambling 77 minutes filled with often incoherent passages claiming to disprove the scope of the Holocaust.

The Nuremberg trials, for instance, are dismissed as “the most disgraceful legal farce in history,” and the number of Jews murdered in camps is dismissed as implausibly high. It is not narrated by a human voice, but rather a computerized voice.

Mitchell said he did not endorse the video on his Twitter account, arguing that he merely passed it along to fellow users. B’nai Brith described his Twitter activity as “bizarre postings and outlandish conspiracy theories, comparisons of police officers to the Ku Klux Klan and hateful videos denying the Holocaust.”

This is not the first time he has run afoul of the CFL’s social media rules. Mitchell earned another undisclosed fine three years ago for posting a message that included derogatory terminology for people of Chinese descent.

“As an all-star and role model for Canadian youth,” Mostyn said in the release, “Mr. Mitchell should not be sending out divisive and hateful tweets under the banner of the Montreal Alouettes organization.”

Eta Yudin, who works with The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs in Montreal, said she spoke with Alouettes general manager Jim Popp about the issue.

“We were extremely pleased to see their reaction in denouncing the offensive tweets and in taking the situation seriously,” she said. “In our discussion, he mentioned it’s not over — they’re going to continue to try to understand what happened.”

Mitchell changed his profile picture on Twitter on Thursday, removing a photo featuring him in his new Montreal uniform. He replaced it with a photo of him looking down into a camera, wearing what appears to be a Grey Cup ring.

He continued posting through the afternoon. At one point, he wrote, “I know the TRUTH Shall Free Me…Anti-Semitism doesn’t, hasn’t & NEVER Will LIVE Here.” A little while later, he posted a link to Forbes magazine’s website, to a story under the headline “Israel Forcibly Injected African Immigrants with Birth Control, Report Claims.”

And as of 6:30 p.m. ET, the offending messages regarding the Holocaust were still tied to his account. Because of that, Mostyn told National Post: “This episode still hasn’t been properly addressed.”

“In light of the fact that Mitchell is continuing to violate the league’s policy by leaving the videos on his account, and justifying them to outraged Twitter users throughout the day,” he said, “one has to question the sincerity of both organizations in addressing this serious issue.”