Most of us know, and do not doubt, that during World War II approximately six million European Jews were subjected to inhuman conditions that ultimately ended in their deaths. We understand that this happened in the name of a warped and evil ideology that was the product of a sick man who somehow seized the power needed to carry out such an abominable deed. Most of us, Jew or gentile, would never dream of demeaning by one iota the heartrending suffering that befell innocent men, women and children because of their race. Thank goodness! To most good people, it would defy all reason to do such a thing, and it would additionally defy all that is good in man. We are all aware that man is capable of base and inscrutable deeds, but the majority of us find such things to be repugnant. History is replete with many tales of slaughter, rapine and cruelty committed under all sorts of banners, from religion, to ethnicity, to nationality. What is history, though? Is history something open to interpretation and revision? Is it malleable? Is it something that is amenable to application of the scientific method? Can science really aid in discerning the legitimacy and accuracy of what historians endeavor to recount and explain? I think history makes stops at all of these points as it proceeds from data and through the mind and pen of the historian. In the end, though, it ought to have at least a provisional sense of finality. That is, it should ultimately be presented as a finished product, supported by all possible known facts until, and if, new facts come to light. I believe that history can be a scientific enterprise, and indeed, that it should be. Then there are Holocaust deniers, who have co-opted the innocuous sounding aegis of historical revisionism, which actually is a legitimate discipline. Holocaust deniers, for whatever reason (and what reason could there be?), look to deny that the Holocaust happened (or worse, that it was justified), or how it happened, or the degree to which it happened. Holocaust "revisionism" is nothing more than thinly veiled anti-Semitism. Some, like Ernst Z?ndel, are trying to convince the world that the Holocaust never happened. His stated goal is "the rehabilitation of the German people." He has written lovely pieces like "The Hitler We Loved and Why" and has published his Power: Z?ndelists vs. Zionists . His bumper stickers feature cheerful slogans like: "Germans! Stop Apologizing For The Things You Did Not Do!" and "Tired Of The Holocaust? Now You Can Stop It! Help Ernst Z?ndel Win Against the Zionists!". The man, basically, speaks for himself and leaves little doubt concerning how he feels about Jews. The 65-year-old Z?ndel is currently in jail in Canada on charges of being a threat to national security; charges supported by his ties to white supremacist groups. He's a despicable character, but one is not at all unclear about where he stands. That counts for something, in my book, if only as a red flag among many white ones. Others, such as Mark Weber, David Irving and Bradley Smith (all in some way affiliated with the Institute for Historical Review, or IHR), are more subtle, and therefore pernicious, in their Holocaust denial. They look to bedeck Holocaust denial, which is pseudo-science, in the respectable apparel of science (much like the case of the "science" of eugenics). By painting a veneer of scholarly pretense over their spurious or distorted claims, they hope to appeal to those who are not of a critical disposition. They poke at the weaker points in the great, overarching structure that comprises the entire Holocaust story. They call into question the viability of gassing and cremating mass numbers of human beings. They quibble over whether or not Ausrottung der Juden really meant the "extermination of the Jews" in SS memoranda. They look to minimize the exact number of Jews killed in the Final Solution (as if this will somehow vindicate the Nazis). In short, they look to make their anti-Semitic views look academic, in an almost pedestrian way. In her famous coverage of Adolf Eichmann's trial in Jerusalem in 1961-62, Hannah Arendt remarked upon the "banality of evil" as she realized that she wasn't looking at the monstrous visage of pure evil she had expected to see. Instead, she saw a tired-looking old man who spoke blandly, matter-of-factly, of how he had overseen the extermination of millions of Jews. For him, the business of genocide was just like anyone else going to perform their job before going home at night. He actually appeared normal. The banality of evil. I call what modern Holocaust deniers do the evil of banality, because through their efforts at breaking down the integrity of the huge mass of disparate facts that constitute the historical event of the Holocaust, they make it somehow mundane. They cheapen it with feigned authority and dull pedantry. They look to transform what is one of the most horrendous examples of man's capacity to do violence to man into a dry and clinical study, which, they assert, has been overblown by emotionalism. And by implication, they suggest that the Holocaust has been exploited by the people who have to live with such a fiendish legacy. I believe there is evil in this banality. At the end of the day, there's really only one way to do history right. We must eventually have done with speculation, personal bias and logical errors. And then what? The most effective and powerful methodology available to discern whether or not anything has happened in history is what is called a convergence of primary source evidence. It was also called a "consilience of inductions" by nineteenth-century philosopher of science, William Whewell. This is why we can't call much of what we find in the Bible history. Or why two guys claiming to have seen a UFO should not compel one to automatically suspend one's disbelief. Or, for that matter, why a preponderance of evidence is the best way to prove one's case in a court of law. The more firsthand sources one can consult concerning any event, the higher is the likelihood that this event occurred. And one will be better able to establish the details of how and why it happened. When it comes to the Holocaust, there are mountains of evidentiary data that show unequivocally that during World War II, six million Jews were killed in concentration camps, by the Einsatzgruppen death squads, on death marches, or in other horrible ways. We know who did it and why they did it. [Part 1 of 2]
