Sir, - Kevin Myers's discussion of the manner in which the Holocaust has been and is currently being enshrined in law in a number of countries prompts me to make the following comments.
Mr. Myers is correct in arguing that making the denial of the Holocaust a crime serves no purpose. It remains paradoxical but true that, by silencing those who deny the Holocaust, we silence chose who remind us of its reality and prevent us from becoming complacent.
Rather than making it a crime to dispute the numbers of people who were consumed by the Nazi killing organisation, much more would be achieved by making the works of people like Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi required reading on secondary school syllabi. Such articulations - of the personal impact of the Holocausts as theirs are amongst the most necessary books of the 20th century. Despite this, I do feel it is necessary to take issue with Mr Myers, particularly the figures that he uses in referring to those murdered in the Holocaust. Where do these figures come from and with what justification does he claim that they are more authoritative than the six million he passes off as a convenient and neat total?
However, such debating of the quantitative significance of the Holocaust can and does obscure its qualitative significance. In this regard, Mr. Myers' suggestion that the "Germanic efficiency" employed in the implementation of the "final solution" is one of the things differentiating the Holocaust from other instances of genocide is dubious. It was not a distinctively Germanic efficiency (nor indeed a distinctive Germanic antisemitism) that was the crucial factor making the Holocaust possible.
Rather, what made it possible, but not inevitable, was the same morally blind instrumental rationality characteristic of modern forms of bureaucratic organisations. That the Holocaust was made possible by the system of desks, paperwork and means end calculation that still surrounds us today, albeit in a more computerised form, is what makes it so unique and what compels us to take a more critical look at the possibilities contained within modern societies. This has been brilliantly argued by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman in his book Modernity and the Holocaust, a book which I urge Mr. Myers to read if he has' not already done so. Yours etc.,
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Blacksburg, Virginia US.