Digging Deeper Into the Holocaust Saga, Research Paper Example

The holocaust of the Second World War which was characterized by the mass extermination of six million Jews in specially designed lethal concentration camps equipped with technical mass killing devices is undeniably the most gruesome and barbaric form of cruelty in the annals of humanity. Indeed, the question of the holocaust still remains an emotionally charged sticky political schism. Whilst it is worth admitting that the holocaust did really take place, there exists yet another group of people drawn from academia, politics and religion who continue to deny the occurrence of the holocaust in its totality. Suffice to cite a few illustrations to buttress this contention. Chiefly among the deniers from academia is Paul Rassinier, a reputable French scholar of the twentieth century; the incumbent president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmedinajad is on record to have persistently denied the occurrence of the holocaust; and most recently the Roman Catholic Church represented by the Pope has been engaged in dialogues aimed at repairing the damaged relationship between the church and the Zionists which was worsened by the restoration of Roman Catholic priests who were excommunicated from the church because of their denial of the holocaust.

Sensitive as the question of the holocaust has always been, this essay will primarily engage in an effort to construct an objective view of the holocaust by assessing both the immediate and remote factors that contributed covertly or overtly to this unfortunate page of human history. In doing this, a number of academic materials were consulted in other to draw the parallels that will distil the facts from the fictitious political colored propaganda. Indeed, each of the works consulted do contain significant information about the holocaust, but the distinguishing factor has been to separate what is factual from what is warped in a manner that suits a parochial interest. Therefore the rest of the essay will be dedicated towards the realization of this goal.

For obviously good reasons this section begins by looking at the written account of the Garrards The Bones of Berdichev: The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman. The main setting of the book is in Zhitomir, a city in Soviet Ukraine that bore the heaviest brunt of the Jewish extermination in the Soviet Union. There is every reason to trust the authenticity of this book, judging from the fact that the central character Vasily Grossman by his professionalism as an experienced war time reporter was well accustomed to the military rudiments and was also at the heart of events due to the personal connection to power brokers on the one hand and the victims of the massacre on the other hand. The events in this book are chronicled with substantiating evidence at every strand of the presentation. It is understood from this work that the success of the Nazi massacre in Ukraine set the stage for the extended annihilation of Jews across mainland Europe. Alexander Victor Prusin also presents a lucid account of the post-war judicial system of bringing to criminal responsibility Soviet citizens who acted in collusion with the Nazi forces. By the Soviet government’s action, there is every reason to believe that indeed the extermination of Jews did indeed occur, if but for nowhere, it did on Soviet territory.

Moyn Samuel’s A Holocaust Controversy: The Treblinka Affair in Postwar also brings to the fore as well as reinforcing the reverberating debate about the contending dynamics in the holocaust saga. Being that sensitive, this work triggered massive polarization of French consciousness. It contains reliable and verifiable facts that feed well into the development of the topic for this essay. On the other end of the spectrum lies a school of thought headed by Paul Rassinier who remains convinced that the gas chambers were never employed at any point in the world war to exterminate Jews in Europe through a systematic policy. All of his works cited in this essay are completely dismissed for their extreme level of bias and politicization. It should be noted that Rassinier did write several papers in his quest to prove that gas chambers were never part of the accoutrements used by the Nazi forces.

It is also worthy of note that in many ways, Paul Rassinier’s written accounts about the use or otherwise of gas chambers by Nazi forces has always generated massive controversies. One is inclined to wonder why his work should trigger such controversies if by accident or design he did have verifiable proof to support his assertions. Unfortunately, the opposite is the case. His works especially those evaluated for this study have fallen short of providing universally accepted standards that can corroborate his contention beyond the inflammatory socialist ideals. On one such instances, the editor of Le Monde Juif magazine evidently assaulted Rassinier’s for its contemptuous gross misrepresentation, misquotation and omissions of vital historical facts. In sheer fairness to the memories of the holocaust legacy, Rassinier’s writings have to be left out in my work because taking away the gas chamber extermination from the holocaust saga will virtually leave nothing in the holocaust history.

Reference

Alexander Victor Prusin. “Fascists Criminals to the Gallows:” The holocaust and Soviet War Crimes Trials, December 1945 to February 1946. Accessed on October 21, 2009 from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/holocaust_and_genocide_studies/v017/17.1prusin.pdf

Garrard John Gordon & Carol Garrard. The Bones of Berdichev: The Life and Fate of Vasily Grossman. Simon & Schuster Adult: 1996.

Moyn, Samuel.  A Holocaust Controversy: The Treblinka Affair in Postwar France. Brandeis University Press: 2005.

Pytell, Timothy E. Redeedming the Unredeemable: Auschwitz and Man’s Search for Meaning. Accessed on October 20, 2009 from http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/holocaust_and_genocide_studies/toc/hgs17.1.html

Rassinier Paul. The Drama of the European Jews. Steppingstones Publications: 1975.

Rassinier Paul. Ulysses Betrayed by his Own, Paris, La Librairie Francaise, 1961