The Shoah: Some thoughts from Raul Hilberg

I find Hilberg the most interesting Shoah (Holocaust) historian, and pass on some of his comments on the events and the history:

On how to conduct history...

I have never begun by asking the big questions, because I was always afraid that I would come up with small answers.

As Josephine Tey said, the truth is in account books, not books of accounts.

As to "how it could happen"...

As the Nazi regime developed over the years, the whole structure of decision-making was changed. At first there were laws. Then there were decrees implementing laws. Then a law was made saying, "There shall be no laws." Then there were orders and directives that were written down, but still published in ministerial gazettes. Then there was government by announcement; orders appeared in newspapers. Then there were the quiet orders, the orders that were not published, that were within the bureaucracy, that were oral. Finally, there were no orders at all. Everybody knew what he had to do. [Emphasis added]

As to "why it could happen"...

The missionaries of Christianity had said in effect: You have no right to live among us as Jews. The secular rulers who followed had proclaimed: You have no right to live among us. The German Nazis at last decreed: You have no right to live.

As to how our role in our own destruction in Europe -- such as the actions of the Juenräte (Jewish Councils) -- was rooted mistake assumption of European Jews:

I had to examine the Jewish tradition of trusting God, princes, laws and contracts... Ultimately I had to ponder the Jewish calculation that the persecutor would not destroy what he could ...exploit. It was precisely this Jewish strategy that dictated accommodation and precluded resistance.

On where the Shoah fits into the world's history:

The 20th century merits the name "The Century of Murder." 1915 Turks slaughtered 2 million Armenians. 1933 to 1954 the Soviet government encompassed the death of 20 to 65 million citizens. 1933 to 1945 Nazi Germany murdered more than 25 million people.... At present times genocidal strife is underway ...

The people of the world have demonstrated themselves to be so capable of forgetting the murderous frenzies in which their fellows have participated that it is essential that one, at least, be remembered and the world be regularly reminded of it.  [Emphasis added]

On forgiveness (summarized from memory):

On existential level, for the survivors, forgiveness may be beneficial.

For the rest of us, it is presumptuous.