COMMENT
Finkielkraut's
The Future
of
a Negation
is an analysis in depth of the per–
verse denials of the existence of the Holocaust. He analyses the career of
Faurisson and others, including some Americans, who designed elaborate
explanations for the denial that the Holocaust existed.
Only one other such denial has come to mind-the denial of the gulag
in the Soviet Union. The motives for this negation are obvious: the friends
of the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union itself did not wish the existence
of the gulag to be known because it violated the ostensible precepts of the
regime. But the negation of the Holocaust by the Nazi apologists is less
simple to understand, for the Nazis were quite explicit in their denuncia–
tion of the Jews and of the necessity for their obliteration.
Mein Kampf
itself was a torrent of abuse of the Jews.
To put a better face on the Nazi regime is, I suppose, quite natural for
Nazi sympathizers, but it does seem a bit hopeless to sanctifY the Nazis by
denying that the Holocaust took place. Hannah Arendt pointed out in The
Origins ofTotalitarianism
that the Nazis placed a high priority on the exter–
mination of the Jews, to the point of using valuable wartime railroad
facilities for that purpose. However, to understand Nazi secrecy about the
Holocaust itself, I think we have to realize that it was to a great extent a
wartime strategy, for the Nazis did not want to alienate further or arouse
the hostility of the people in the West.
Finkielkraut's book is a splendid analysis of a morbid Faurisson phe–
nomenon, and a shameful Soviet denial. But there is one flaw. The language
is quite abstruse and heavy-in both the original and the translation.
WP
