090205-FN1/Revising History

To illustrate with two pertinent examples. The gross estimates of “six million” Jewish fatalities from all causes accepted at Nuremberg on the basis of hearsay evidence have since been revised both upward and downward. (N.W.C.Tr., Opinion, Judge Parker [http://avalon.law.yale.edu /imt /judwarcr.asp#persecution]) The Jewish historian, Raul Hilberg has stated that the calculation of absolute deaths and deaths attributable to a policy of genocide are difficult and complex. His last calculation yielded a total of 5.1 million fatalities although others have calculated less.

Calculating the bare numbers at issue is only the starting point. The ensuing question must focus on the mode and intent of those casualties. Under either a legal or sociological definition, mass homicide is not “genocide” unless the motivating intent is to eradicate a definable target group as such. (1948 Convention on the Prevention of Genocide, Art. II; see also, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, (Rafael Lemkin 1944) [http://www.preventgenocide.org/lemkin/AxisRule1944-1.html].) Whether a singular genocidal policy existed as starting point or arose ad hoc as an end result is subject to a variety of analytical interpretations as can be found discussed on the official German Wansee Museum web site. ([http://www.ghwk.de/engl/kopfengl.htm])

Obviously, the modality of a killing bears on the intent which is why the existence of gas chambers has become an issue in dispute, notwithstanding the assertion of some that the issue is beyond dispute. In the case of Irving v. Lipstadt, (Q.B., April 2000, Case No. 1996 -I- 113), after an exhaustive review, Justice Gray acknowledged that the documentary and testimonial evidence yielded “little clear” or unimpeachable “evidence of the existence of gas chambers designed to kill humans” at Auschwitz. (Opinion § 13.73, 13.74.) He nevertheless, accepted a circumstantial theory of “convergence” that led him to an inferential conclusion that “Jews were killed in large numbers in the gas chambers at Auschwitz” (§ 13.78.) His inference may certainly be reasonable but it is elementary that an inference is not a fact, but an interpretation of subsidiary facts.

These two salient examples illustrate that the entire subject of German war crimes and Axis occupation policies is an extremely vast, complex and difficult area of inquiry involving not a singular fact but an immensity of subsidiary facts, circumstances and inferences.
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