Friday, October 12, 2012

[poqrakjp] Selectively forgetting the Holocaust

While Holocaust remembrance museums and organizations are eager to preserve the memory of the victims, they are probably uneasy about recording the technical details of how the Holocaust was organized and performed for fear of creating a "How To" manual for another attempt at it.  Nevertheless, some of these details almost certainly are present in testimonials of survivors.  What information, if any, is being selectively not recorded or deliberately obscured?  What lines of research and interview questions are being avoided?

Other details, including the behind-the-scenes logistics, would have required interviewing the perpetrators, who were quickly pursued and executed as war criminals.

As macabre as it seems, it is this aspect -- how it was done -- that makes the Nazi Holocaust special among the countless other genocides that have occurred (and are still occurring) in human history:  a first-world country perpetrating it, with German engineering and attention to detail, with priority given and resources devoted to it from the highest level.

Inspired by the irony that Holocaust denial is counterproductive to anti-Semitism.  They, too, should try to preserve its history, for another attempt at it.

But omitting how it was done would play into the hands of Holocaust deniers, who could claim it was impossible to have done.

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