Resistance

GERMAR RUDOLF, RESISTANCE IS OBLIGATORYeven have a distinctly scholarly character as can hardly anywhere elsebe found in the established literature. Hence even the severe opponentshave to grant the book at least a “pseudo-scientific nature,” but it isquestionable whether it is possible to separate by reliable indicators“pseudo” from “real” in the scientific realm at large.The next criterion would be all too coarse polemics, and it is conspicuousthat terms like “hate scenario,” “atrocity lies,” “witch hunt,”“unlimited ignorance” {p. 21}, “Holocaust propagandists” and similarones are not rare. When considering, however, with which expressionsanti-revisionist authors such as Deborah Lipstadt or Wolfgang Benz useto describe their opponents (“hordes,” “immoral equivalences,” “abstrusetrains of thought,” “liars” etc.), then these polemical expressionswill not be seen from the outset as evidence that the formal criteria for ascientific nature are not met.I consider it necessary, however, not to remain at a general characterizationof the book at large but to contemplate the individual contributionsunder the guiding question whether they can be classified in therange of revisions which can be found among established literature orwhether they have to be subsumed into a different category, that of explicitrevisionism. Hence I start with those contributions for which anaffiliation with the domain of revisions can be ascertained most easily,and I will then proceed to those which have to be called “revisionist” inthe more narrow sense.The contribution by Manfred Köhler on the “The Value of Testimonyand Confessions Concerning the Holocaust” engages in deliberationswhich can be found in a more general form in scientific discussionsabout the tendency of witness accounts to be erroneous, like for instancethe book by Jan Vansina on Oral Tradition as History, 20 and thecompilation of “absurd” (or better said: questionable) witness statementsabout the “alleged NS genocide” (in its specific events) cannot bedeemed illegitimate.{p. 22} The case study presented by Claus Jordan about GottfriedWeise, who was sentenced to lifetime imprisonment, does not reallybelong into the realm of science, since it concerns only individualevents, but the investigation proves such an extent of efforts to assistwhat the author considers to be a wrongfully sentenced defendant thatone cannot but wish that a similar amount of work about detailled, butsymptomatic problems could also be found more frequently in the establishedliterature. According to my knowledge, this literature basical-274