Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYtions do not belong in scientific treatises of history. In any case, thiscriterion of the BPjM cannot be generalized and is therefore impermissible.The BPjM demands moreover that a book on the extermination ofthe Jews must “present and critically assess all known facts, laws, regulationsand court verdicts.” This absolutist demand is impossible tomeet already due to the sheer volume of these items. To my knowledgethere are by now more than 1,000 court verdicts about alleged NationalSocialist violent crimes. If each of these verdicts had only 20 pages,how many pages would be required in order to present and criticallyassess all of the verdicts? And yet nothing would have been gained bythis, because court verdicts are basically nothing else than opinions oflay persons based on information from hearsay. After all, judges –viewed from the perspective of a historian – are nothing but historicallay persons, and their verdicts are merely based on the statements ofthird parties, which almost never could be verified by documents or materialevidence. Hence the verdicts of penal courts are pretty much uselessfor a historical researcher. It would be different if one could gaindirect access to the investigation files or if verbatim records would havebeen prepared during German penal trials which could be consulted.Rückerl, as the longtime director of the German Center for the investigationof NS crimes in Ludwigsburg, had access to almost all of thesefiles, but that material is inaccessible to historians. 193Fact is that the BPjM’s demand cannot be met either in theory or inpractice.If one were to meet these arbitrary, maximalist requirements of theBPjM for a scientific work on the extermination of the Jews, these demandswould probably be swiftly supplemented with new, similarlyarbitrary and nonsensical demands. This approach is pure despotism!8. ConclusionAccording to the German Law for the Protection of the Youth, theadvisory body of the BPjM which renders indexing decisions is staffedwith representatives of various societal groups, among them some from193 The archive has recently been made accessible for historical research, although revisionistswould risk arrest rather than enlightenment.174