Merged General Holocaust denial discussion thread

[uke2se]

Okay. You didn't get it.

I got it just fine. I'm just saying you are wrong, but I suppose that's like saying the sky is blue.

 

[Clayton Moore]

Originally Posted by Clayton Moore View Post
Train of thought.

It shows the gruesome story he had just written had no effect on him.

Not unlike the spouse murderer, who, after telling the police the gruesome details of how he discovered the body, muses that the windowsill plants need watering.

This shows how little actual life experience our resident deniers actuall have.

Clayton cannot imagine any other reason for the person in question to act the way he did than a world-wide conspiracy of joos. I often notice how conspiracy theorists - for all their wildly imaginative and wacky ideas - have really poor imaginations.

I said nothing about "joos." A disrespectful term for Jewish people used by the you hate me bleaters.

 

[MG1962]

Train of thought.

It shows the gruesome story he had just written had no effect on him.

Not unlike the spouse murderer, who, after telling the police the gruesome details of how he discovered the body, muses that the windowsill plants need watering.

You have never really been hungry or thirsty have you, besides being surrounded by death desensetizes you to it. Soldiers journals are full of such events as you and Saggy find so outlandish. Maybe you should sit with some vets from any war you choose and ask them how hardened they'd became to all the procreedings

 

[Clayton Moore]

You have never really been hungry or thirsty have you, besides being surrounded by death desensetizes you to it. Soldiers journals are full of such events as you and Saggy find so outlandish. Maybe you should sit with some vets from any war you choose and ask them how hardened they'd became to all the procreedings

I'm proceeding to take steps toward having your poetic license revoked.

Lying isn't a result of desensitization.

 

[MG1962]

I'm proceeding to take steps toward having your poetic license revoked.

Lying isn't a result of desensitization.

Complete dodge noted, but one thing I will give you Clayton, you are nothing but consistant

So other than personal outrage care to explain what is illogical about the situation.

 

[LemmyCaution]

You repeat the lies and nonsense as if "Next stop Holy Grail."

So tell us about the Auschwitz trial. Since your chums are staying mum on Oscar Strawczynski . . . let's hear about the lies and nonsense you say I'm repeating - and how you know that my post on the trial repeated lies and nonsense. With specifics.

 

[TSR]

Lying isn't a result of desensitization.

.
So, what *is* your excuse for posting such knowing untruths?
.

 

[Dogzilla]

Your claim wasn't restricted to unloading the gas chambers. It's telling how you snipped the part of my reply where I asked whether Jews drove the trains or helped load the rifles of the guards. Evidently we are witnessing the start of yet another trademark Dogzilla retreat as a bloviating hyperbolic claim is cut down to size.

You're right. I said Jews played a pivotal role in the destruction process without which the holocaust wouldn't have happened. The gas chambers are part of the holocaust. I snipped the part of your reply that was stupid and unworthy of a reply. Did Jews drive the trains? I don't know that they didn't. But I do know they helped load passengers onto the trains and they helped unload them when they arrived at the factories of death. So what if they didn't drive the train? Likewise, they probably didn't help load the rifles of the guards. But they helped manufacture ammunition and other armaments. But so what? I think what we're seeing here is the patented Nick Terry hyperfocused question that is introduced when he can't counter-argue the point.

Utter nonsense. The Judenraete did not react uniformly to Nazi demands. Some refused and were shot for their pains, some committed suicide, some used all of the extremely limited bargaining power they had to reduce the impact of Nazi demands, some cooperated with resistance groups. The Nazis used a combination of deception and massive violence to carry out the deportations. In Lodz, the early deportations were organised with a great deal of cooperation from Rumkowski, who is one of the few council leaders who is sometimes considered to be 'guilty of mass murder'. But the September 1942 deportations, despite Rumkowski's attempts to appeal to the survivors on pragmatic grounds (sacrifice this group to save the rest), ended up in a bloodbath due to non-cooperation, as by then the ghetto was fully aware of what was intended for them. Some councils elsewhere cooperated before they knew exactly what was in store, others weren't even given the chance to cooperate.

But for the avarice of the SK under the command of Christian Wirth, Konrad Morgen might not have ever discovered the extermination process. Just because some Jews felt they had to cooperate doesn't mean that other didn't do so joyously.

The Sonderkommandos had a very simple choice, cooperate or die. Many chose not to cooperate, which is why we have reports of resistance, escapes, mutinies, mass refusals of certain contingents, as well as the fact (which is rather well documented) that three of the death camp crews revolted. The Sonderkommandos "shared in the spoils" in order to survive. Most, however, did not.

The SK knew they were going to be murdered after a few weeks so there wouldn't be any living witnesses to the horror. Refusing to assist with the destruction process would have meant they would be killed today instead of three weeks from today.

Yes, there's the easily understood standard whereby the people with the guns are held to be more guilty than the people without guns. It was exceedingly difficult for any German or Ukrainian to serve at BST without pulling the triggers on their pistols or rifles. This was not a dilemma faced by the Sonderkommandos, who didn't have any pistols or rifles until they revolted and broke out of two of the camps.

Irrelevant. Not everybody who had a gun killed somebody and not everybody was killed was killed with a gun.

I'm not sure why you are assuming that the Demjanjuk judgement is some kind of new standard when it is in fact somewhat controversial and will be contested on appeal, by historians, etc. Of course, it does help you create yet another tedious strawman and paint a black-and-white picture, but unfortunately most commentators are perfectly aware that there was a grey zone of moral responsibility which was inhabited by people like the Sonderkommandos, who themselves were often wracked with guilt because of their decision to try to survive and their awareness that they had helped indirectly in the destruction of so many people.

Do you have any evidence to support the claim that people like Abe Bomba are "wracked with guilt" because they tricked nekkid teenage girls into believing they wouldn't be choked to death? The fact that these demons in human disguise spoke openly about their reprehensible behavior suggests otherwise.

From what we know, about 800 Trawnikis served at BST over the course of two years; more than 40 died after being shot trying to escape, or after mutinying. Some succeeded in deserting, but on the whole 90% obeyed. The number of Jews forced into the Sonderkommando role at those three camps could have been well over 10,000, and fewer than 150 survived, all after escaping or revolting.

And there are probably no more than 500 alive today.

 

[Dogzilla]

No, I didn't bother doing what you did. I didn't want to waste my time. And I concluded that doing what you did would be a waste of time. I decided instead to finish a book of essays on Polish and Jewish views of the Holocaust in Poland, which seemed better grounded and more to my interest.

You could accomplish both. So if somebody said that Wiesel's books were popular among holocaust education instructors would you ask for evidence to back up the claim or would you say that it is impossible to know this?

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to see Night used widely.

Why wouldn't you be surprised, what with Wiesel being considered such a bozo among holocaust scholars and all?

But I don't know what it proves without a better method than Google look ups.

It proves that Elie Wiesel's "Night" is popular among teachers who upload class syllabi to the internet that can be found through a google search for 'holocaust syllabus' Would you also say that my confirmation that Elie Wiesel isn't a primary source for holocaust historians by scanning the indexes of major historical works and noting the lack of an 'Elie Wiesel' entry equally meaningless? If so, how do you support this evidently unknowable statement that Wiesel isn't a primary source?

It is true that there is a student edition of Hilberg, but it dates from the 80s and is not well thought of.

And how do you know this?

I don't argue that Wiesel is a nobody; my point, which you didn't reply to, is that his fame and his use have nothing to do with the actual research and the results of scholarship on the Holocaust. "Using" Wiesel goes to the impact and uses of the Holocaust in contemporary culture, not to whether it occurred. Deniers mix these two issues.

The impact and uses of the holocaust in contemporary culture and the nature of the holocaust cannot be neatly divorced from one another. Whether it occurred or not is not in dispute.

For the record, I haven't read Wiesel's books, only op-eds in local newspaper when I lived in Boston. I did not like his approach or style and found no reason to read his works. His writing played absolutely no role in forming my views and understanding of the Holocaust. I am a nobody, but I would bet that the vast majority of somebodies could say something similar. That you guys focus on him makes you look foolish.

It sounds like we agree on Wiesel in a vacuum. I don't focus on him but not because I think it's foolish to do so. I think it's foolish to insist that somebody who IS the holocaust in the popular imagination is so unimportant to holocaust scholars.

 

[Mondial]

A good example of fake atrocity photos used by holocaust propagandists to promote the claim of extermination - www.heretical.com/walendy/fakes.html

 

[Clayton Moore]

You could accomplish both. So if somebody said that Wiesel's books were popular among holocaust education instructors would you ask for evidence to back up the claim or would you say that it is impossible to know this?




Why wouldn't you be surprised, what with Wiesel being considered such a bozo among holocaust scholars and all?




It proves that Elie Wiesel's "Night" is popular among teachers who upload class syllabi to the internet that can be found through a google search for 'holocaust syllabus' Would you also say that my confirmation that Elie Wiesel isn't a primary source for holocaust historians by scanning the indexes of major historical works and noting the lack of an 'Elie Wiesel' entry equally meaningless? If so, how do you support this evidently unknowable statement that Wiesel isn't a primary source?




And how do you know this?




The impact and uses of the holocaust in contemporary culture and the nature of the holocaust cannot be neatly divorced from one another. Whether it occurred or not is not in dispute.




It sounds like we agree on Wiesel in a vacuum. I don't focus on him but not because I think it's foolish to do so. I think it's foolish to insist that somebody who IS the holocaust in the popular imagination is so unimportant to holocaust scholars.

Holocaust scholars perform their task in a non academic way(s).

Agenda. Self interest. etc.


If you remember the little sharing ritual that giggling children love.

1 for you two for me, 1 for you 3 for me, 1 for you 1 for me, 2 for you 4 for me.



Another is the old programmer fail safe called fall thru logic. Only the Holocaust scholars perform the "fall thru logic" test when information is reviewed as by an edit routine. The actual name of the test is "ignore logic test."

 

[Dogzilla]

.
Ummm. In the post I quoted, in which you said we do not have any documents from the aliens or Egyptians collaborating those stories.

Since we *do* have such documentation from the Nazis, that is an entire class of evidence we have supporting the Holocaust, which we do not have for your examples.

Making your attempts to compare them flawed, as I said.

I didn't try to compare anything to anything. I showed one example of how an epistemological standard was OK for the holocaust but not OK for the not holocaust. (In fact, it's not OK at all)

If you want to argue that there is an entire class of evidence supporting the holocaust but there isn't supporting aliens or Egyptians, then you need to take that up with Dr. Shermer. He is the one who said there is an absence of evidence for the holocaust. He is the one who said that that's OK.

Asked and answered: I have made no comments regarding that statement, and so feel no need to do more than observe you are trying to use it to make flawed comparisons and distract from the fact that you are desperate not to discuss this supposed "absence of evidence" since it blows *your* statement that such evidence was handled differently for the Holocaust.

The evidence or lack thereof for the holocaust isn't what we're discussing. We're discussing--not if but to what degree--the holocaust is held to a different standard. It obviously is. Everybody else has conceded that point while you try to twist the discussion into something it isn't.

And does not refer to that particular standard in that 'touching'.

Yesterday you didn't know that Shermer had touched on that subject. Now you know that particular standard isn't discussed in his touching on the subject. You know this because you read the entire book overnight?

Even had I misrepresented you, something that again you cannot offer any evidence of, your 'response' to 'imaginary quotes' is off topic.

The Law of the Moser doesn't apply to crimes like murder or rape. Although you're partially correct in that some Jews still believe in the basic principle. I know of one case where a Jew tried to argue he couldn't be held in contempt for refusing to testify in a deposition by invoking the Law of the Moser. He tried to argue that forcing a Jew to testify against a Jew was akin to forcing a wife to testify against her husband. The court called BS on it and the guy either testified or was jailed for contempt. Most Jews would agree that the argument is BS but even those who adhere to the rule don't advocate stoning the Moser to death. And, no, even in Israel it isn't legal to stone a Moser to death.

I swear to Dog, first you say Abe Foxman doesn't know God poop from the concept of 'chosenness' and now this. Why do you hate Jews so much???

The topic here is your statement that evidence that evidence for the Holocaust was evaluated differently than evidence for other historical events.

Are you ever going to get around to demonstrating that the double standard is not your own?
.

I did. I gave a splendid example of how an epistemological statement of principle (a bogus one) was OK when we're talking about the holocaust but was correctly identified as bogus when we're talking about the not-holocaust. Pay attention!

 

[Dogzilla]

Whoops Saggy....your memory is failing. You forgot your claim was debunked only recently.

http://www.prwatch.org/files/images/burning_cows.jpg

Comparing Jews to cows might be offensive to some people.

 

[MG1962]

A good example of fake atrocity photos used by holocaust propagandists to promote the claim of extermination - www.heretical.com/walendy/fakes.html

The caption for the first photo

The picture features a group of men on the right, a man with impossibly long arms and two elbows,

But of course it cant be he is dragging something with his left hand, because that would not fit in with the utter dishonesty about the rest of the photos

 

[uke2se]

A good example of fake atrocity photos used by holocaust propagandists to promote the claim of extermination - [link to Nazi site snipped]

Wow, that's some pretty piss poor investigative skills shown by the denier who put that together. It shows how you really need to dissuade yourself from reality to be a holocaust denier.

By the way, Mondial, do you ever post anything that doesn't contain a link to a Nazi site?

 

[MG1962]

Comparing Jews to cows might be offensive to some people.

Calling them pathological liars probably creates the same level of offense

 

[Corsair 115]

The evidence is all around you, everyday.

Do Jews own PBS? Fox News? CBS television? ABC? CNN? The BBC? CBC? Do Jews own Time magazine? Newsweek? U.S. News and World Report? Macleans? The Economist?

It was clear from your original comment that you imagined a vast conspiracy that controlled all manner of media, not just scholarly ones. So, where is the evidence? You can start with the specific media outlets I mentioned and work from there. Please pinpoint the Jewish connection which ties them all together and gets them to agree in regards to perpetrating the Holocaust "lie".

Unless you have such evidence or can provide it, you're little more than a conspiracy crank, and can be dismissed as such.

 

[Nick Terry]

You're right. I said Jews played a pivotal role in the destruction process without which the holocaust wouldn't have happened. The gas chambers are part of the holocaust. I snipped the part of your reply that was stupid and unworthy of a reply. Did Jews drive the trains? I don't know that they didn't. But I do know they helped load passengers onto the trains and they helped unload them when they arrived at the factories of death. So what if they didn't drive the train? Likewise, they probably didn't help load the rifles of the guards. But they helped manufacture ammunition and other armaments. But so what? I think what we're seeing here is the patented Nick Terry hyperfocused question that is introduced when he can't counter-argue the point.

Aaand we see you doing it again. You asserted and now reassert that "Jews played a pivotal part in the destruction process", and have twice now snipped points which undermine this contention.

No doubt you'll also snip the further points that can easily be made against the contention that "Jews played a pivotal part in the destruction process", but let's make them anyway, or reiterate the ones you snipped, and see what we are actually left with, mmmkay?

There is next to no evidence that Jews played a role in assisting the Nazis in shooting themselves in the Soviet Union. The Nazis didn't even have to get Jews to dig their own graves much of the time, as they recycled antitank ditches built by the Soviets, or impressed Soviet POWs and civilians to do the work, for reasons of secrecy.

The major exception is Jacob Gens and the police of the Vilnius ghetto, who were forced by the Nazis to actually carry out some of the shootings later on. And Gens is regarded as one of those community leaders who like Rumkowski would have been accused of collaboration and tried after the war, had he survived. The Lodz and Vilnius ghettos had some of the highest survival rates in part because of the strategy followed by these community leaders, 'salvation through work', but this hasn't stopped pretty much everyone condemning Rumkowski and Gens, because other leaders, like Barash in Bialystok, followed the same strategy without succumbing to the temptation to sacrifice one part of the ghetto to save another part.

You snipped the part of my previous post about the Judenraete's varied behaviour. Now you assert that Jews "helped load passengers onto the trains", referring presumably to the Jewish ghetto police. It's pretty hard to think of a single deportation where there weren't large numbers of Nazi police and auxiliaries driving the deportees onto the trains; the majority of deportations affected ghettos where there wasn't a Jewish police force worth naming. Their role is fairly marginal to the overall success of deportations from the larger ghettos. You don't find any evidence of Jewish police being involved in the deportations from the Bialystok region or Bialystok ghetto, for example. In several cases the Jewish police were taken aside and shot after they had assisted in the initial round-ups. They didn't go from house to house in the Cracow ghetto shooting those too weak to move or who were trying to hide. In some of the larger actions their assistance was overtaken by events as the entire deportation descended into a bloodbath, which was not infrequent.

And in the larger ghettos, you are talking about a tiny minority of the entire community. Nobody disputes the fact of collaboration by informers and spies in the Warsaw ghetto; the role of 'The Thirteen' is positively infamous. That the Warsaw ghetto police participated at first in the great action is also well known. But that action degenerated into a block by block clearing action carried out by German and Latvian police, which left more than 5,000 dead. The head of the Jewish council had committed suicide before the action, other community leaders were swept away.

You now reply that you don't know if Jews didn't drive the trains, which is poistively hilarious. Do you ever bother to look these things up, or do you just rely on your inexhaustible supply of natural ignorance when you come out with tripe like this? Jews didn't drive the trains. They didn't shoot deportees trying to escape from the trains. That was done by Germans, along with Ukrainian guards and sometimes, Polish train-drivers.

It's pretty hard overall to see where Jews were genuinely pivotal in the destruction process through to the actual death camps themselves. Unlike other nationalities in Nazi-occupied Europe, Jews were not trusted to kill their own kind, with the sole exception of Gens, a one-off. But we have copious evidence of Russians killing Russians, Ukrainians guarding Ukrainians, and French and Italians helping deport French and Italians.

But for the avarice of the SK under the command of Christian Wirth, Konrad Morgen might not have ever discovered the extermination process. Just because some Jews felt they had to cooperate doesn't mean that other didn't do so joyously.

Why are you taking the story of the wedding at face value? The closest thing to that incident which is corroborated by another witness are reports from survivors as well as Trawnikis that the SS organised a mock wedding in Treblinka to amuse themselves, one of the many Goffman-esque parodies of normal social behaviour which they instigated at the camp in '43.

The SK knew they were going to be murdered after a few weeks so there wouldn't be any living witnesses to the horror.

Wrong. In the first phase of Treblinka, Sonderkommandos were replaced every few days with the exception of a small number of skilled workers. Stangl instituted the same system which was used at Sobibor and which was also evidently used at Belzec, of retaining the Sonderkommandos for longer in order not to disrupt the work process.

Refusing to assist with the destruction process would have meant they would be killed today instead of three weeks from today.

Wrong. The Sonderkommandos knew that if they refused to work, they would be killed. They did not necessarily know how long they might be kept alive, but could be certain only that they would be killed after the end of the process.

Continuing to work meant taking an essentially animalistic decision to survive. It's one that would be made by probably most people who landed in a similiar situation. There is enough evidence from comparable lesser situations to indicate that when faced with a life-or-death choice, human beings will cooperate with captors even to the point of killing other people. No court would convict someone of murder in that situation. Nor are such people held to be murderers by the moral consensus of western society.

Irrelevant. Not everybody who had a gun killed somebody and not everybody was killed was killed with a gun.

Not only is it not irrelevant, but your rather desperate attempt to move the goalposts falls flat because there is no evidence that any Sonderkommandos killed deportees or other inmates with their bare hands, knives, clubs, whatever.

By contrast, the majority of the SS and majority of auxiliary guards killed people outside of the gas chambers, in what were fairly substantial numbers. They killed the Sonderkommandos randomly or in reprisal, they killed deportees when unloading the trains or in the 'hospital', they killed deportees who tried to resist. Not all did so, which is why several SS men were acquitted and why Trawnikis didn't face an automatic death sentence when tried in the Soviet Union.

Do you have any evidence to support the claim that people like Abe Bomba are "wracked with guilt" because they tricked nekkid teenage girls into believing they wouldn't be choked to death? The fact that these demons in human disguise spoke openly about their reprehensible behavior suggests otherwise.

There certainly is evidence that Sonderkommandos reported experiencing guilt, just read the totality of the testimonies, memoirs and interviews with them, several Auschwitz Sonderkommandos were asked about this by Gideon Greif in interviews. Quite a few did not given testimony or did so only after much time had passed since there was a fair bit of animosity from other survivors towards especially the Auschwitz Sonderkommandos.

Considering that many Sonderkommandos stated that they tried to survive in order to testify, your spin is also pretty wayward. Of course, the thing you hate most about the Sonderkommandos is the fact that some of them survived to testify about what they saw, and even though you're a denier, evidently you are such an antisemitic little **** that you will happily change tack to try and insult Jews from another angle, despite the fact that it flatly contradicts your denial.

Your entire argument here makes no sense unless you accept the fact that there was mass murder. But we know that you don't accept the fact of mass murder. You're trying to leverage a genuine phenomeon for other purposes, namely your blatantly obvious Jew-hatred. Not only is this intellectually incoherent, it's also vile and pathetic.

And there are probably no more than 500 alive today.

Try like more about five, if you're referring to Sonderkommandos. Every single Sonderkommando from Auschwitz is now dead, ditto from Belzec and Chelmno. A few are still alive from Sobibor, and maybe 1-2 from Treblinka.

 

[LemmyCaution]

. . . Filip Meuler, states that the kapos played a game at the morning roll call where prisoners were challenged to doff and replace their caps quickly, those failing to do so were CLUBBED TO DEATH. A typical morning roll call as recounted by Meuller could result in 35 deaths. In the next sentence Meuller complains that the tea at the roll call following the clubbing was served "stone cold" as well. Folks you can't make up stuff this idiotic.

I have tried explaining to you that your common sense is not a proof of what happens in the world. What appears to you to be incongruous and easily dismissed may happen under extreme conditions which are not familiar to you. You, LGR, and others who harp on this sort of "impossibility," mocking the victims as you go, apparently live circumscribed lives the limited experience of which circumscribes your awareness of what people can do.

Let's just take an example from the 'sixties of what people are capable of: In August 1969, after the murders of Sharon Tate and others, during which murderer Susan Atkins had tasted the victims' blood on her hand to renew her life, members of the Manson family went to the home of a well-to-do couple, Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Manson and an accomplice bound the couple and left. Those left in the house murdered the couple. LaBianca's body was later discovered with an ivory-handled carving fork stuck into his chest, a knife in his neck, and the word "war" carved into his stomach. He had been stabbed 26 times. Rosemary his wife had 41 stab wounds. "DEATH TO PIGS"* and "RISE" were daubed onto the living room walls in blood.* The phrase "HEALTER SKELTER" was similarly written on the refrigerator door. Testimony indicated that after the murders one of the killers had walked to LaBianca's corpse, stuck the fork had been stuck into it and then carved the word "war" on it.

The killers then showered and finally, before leaving the scene of the murders, went to the kitchen and fixed themselves something to eat.

Did I make this up? The events I've described aren't precisely analogous to the situation at Auschwitz, of course, because Mueller was a victim, not a perpetrator. But both events share the similarity in which people do very ordinary things under extreme conditions, ordinary things that seem incongruous given the extremity. I suggest you read more and learn more about human beings before you lecture people with wider experience about idiocy, lies, and impossibilities.

 

[LemmyCaution]

You could accomplish both. So if somebody said that Wiesel's books were popular among holocaust education instructors would you ask for evidence to back up the claim or would you say that it is impossible to know this?

You seem to misunderstand my point. I preferred to spend my time doing something more valuable. My interest in the topic isn't equal to the effort it would have taken me to quantify the claim. And . . . I am not unaware that Wiesel's book is popular, so its widespread use is what I'd expect.

Why wouldn't you be surprised, what with Wiesel being considered such a bozo among holocaust scholars and all?

Because Holocaust scholars aren't teaching the majority of these courses. Nor do I know that scholars consider Wiesel a "bozo"; that is a word you are putting into my mouth. I wrote that scholars rarely even refer to or cite Wiesel's work in their own empirical work. That may be because of its literary nature or for other reasons having nothing to do with his being a bozo. I did say that my own exposure to Wiesel didn't make me want to read his works.

It proves that Elie Wiesel's "Night" is popular among teachers who upload class syllabi to the internet that can be found through a google search for 'holocaust syllabus' Would you also say that my confirmation that Elie Wiesel isn't a primary source for holocaust historians by scanning the indexes of major historical works and noting the lack of an 'Elie Wiesel' entry equally meaningless? If so, how do you support this evidently unknowable statement that Wiesel isn't a primary source?

Yes, it shows that Night is popular with a self-selected group of instructors. That was my point: it would take significant work that I have neither the time nor means nor interest in carrying out to ascertain whether this group is representative. In the case of your index scanning, and whether it is potentially misleading, it all depends. If your review is carefully controlled, uses comparison points, and is statistically valid, it would be worthwhile. If you simply took the first eight or ten titles that pop up in Google and looked for Wiesel, I wouldn't give it much credence. In my case, I've read probably 500+ books on the Holocaust, I rarely find Wiesel cites, so I conclude that he isn't used very often. My method is far from the best. I admit that my "result" is impressionistic, that I haven't been meticulous about noting occurrences of Wiesel (partly because Wiesel isn't of any importance to me, which is my bias), and that such counting could be done with much more rigor.

And how do you know this?

By looking at the copyright year, and from points made about it by Holocaust scholars. I should add that I have a bias, having read the Student Edition and the 2003 edition. The Student Edition has a chopped up quality to it. I didn't really appreciate what Hilberg was doing until I read the full 3 volumes. So I do have a bias here, based on my own reading.

The impact and uses of the holocaust in contemporary culture and the nature of the holocaust cannot be neatly divorced from one another. Whether it occurred or not is not in dispute.

What occurred is in dispute. And Wiesel - and his role in contemporary culture - hardly registers in that debate. Hilberg's 3 volumes register. Longerich's books register. Monographs like Angrick & Klein's on Riga register. Books by Safrian, Wildt, Dieckmann, Aly, and many other scholars whom you guys rarely mention register. The point is why the focus on Wiesel to the exclusion of many scholars of many, many times more importance in understanding the events?

It sounds like we agree on Wiesel in a vacuum. I don't focus on him but not because I think it's foolish to do so. I think it's foolish to insist that somebody who IS the holocaust in the popular imagination is so unimportant to holocaust scholars.

It's not foolish to remark about something that is observable. Are you arguing that Wiesel is important to Holocaust scholars? Listen, when I was in college - please don't make age jokes like your cohort LGR - the most popular books on the American Civil War were written by a non-academic, Bruce Catton. They were best seller popular with broad readership, they were among the most assigned books in undergraduate courses, and they were great, accessible reads. They were, however, not the latest in scholarship. So why were they assigned, warts and all? Because undergrads could begin to get a flavor for the period from them, given the intellectual level of undergrads - I suppose that this was the reasoning of those professors who assigned Catton's books. By graduate school, one didn't even hear of these widely popular books. I don't find this surprising, by the way.