Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYArt. 1: The Party is always right.Art. 2: If the Party is not right for once, then Art. 1 takes effectautomatically.”Apart from that, I declare here that imprisoning dissident historiansis not problematic nonsense but a downright crime. You know the GermanPenal Code better than I do. Somewhere in it something is saidabout the prosecution of innocent people and about false imprisonment.We are forced by penal law to believe in something, because thissomething was allegedly so unique. Hence do we have to believe becausethat which is alleged has been so unique, so extreme? The worldhas seen such an outlandish logic before, namely some 1,800 yearsago: 271 “[Due to his] defense of absurd, illogical, anti-rational churchdogmas, Christian apologist Tertullian (200 A.C) was accused ofadvocating the thesis: ‘Credo, quia absurdum est’/’I believe, becauseit is absurd.’ 272 May this be substituted in the age of enlightenmentby a ‘Credendum est, quia extremum est’/’One has to believe,because it is extreme’?”I, however, demand a likewise extraordinary, uniquely critical andthorough investigation of the unique allegations, which, after all, serveas a justification for such extreme measures like collective guilt, collectiveresponsibility, collective shame and what other kinds of collectiveterms are being invented. If a mark of Cain is foisted upon me, and myhuman rights are being restricted in a unique way, I simply demand alsoa unique investigation of these allegations. That is indeed the least onecan expect!When in spring 1993, due to the publication of my expert report onAuschwitz, emotions ran high at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart,Germany (my then employer), the then Managing Director of the InstituteProf. Dr. Arndt Simon stated to me the following in a personal conversationon 3 May 1993:“Every era has its taboos. Even we researchers have to honor thetaboos of our era. We Germans must not touch this subject [of themass murder of Jews], others have to do that. We have to accept thatwe Germans have fewer rights than other.”271 Ibid., p. 140.272 Tertullian in fact wrote: credibile est, quia ineptum est (it is credible, because it is fatuous/inexpedient),which isn’t much better either; see Timothy Barnes, Tertullian. A Historicaland Literary Study, Oxford 1971, p. 223.212