To understand the Holocaust (assuming one wishes to do so), one begins with the following statement by Steven Katz (1993):

Has there ever been a comparable example of so much disciplined planning and modern technological know-how, so much specialization and concern with efficiency, being harnessed and used solely to murder a noncombatant civilian population. An entire, sophisticated industry, and much of the energy of the German nation and its allies, were devoted solely to the production of corpses.

The "production of corpses" is an apt phrase. In short, killing Jews or the creation of dead bodies was the purpose of the Holocaust. This is the beginning and the end of Hitler's Ideology--the Nazi project: to produce corpses, that is, to kill people; turn them into dead bodies.

This is unpleasant. If one doesn't wish to encounter that which is unpleasant, one has the right to study some other phenomenon.

If one wishes to study the Holocaust (or really any form of mass-murder--that is the history of the 20th century) one must directly encounter unpleasant reality.

What's more, if one wish to understand the Holocaust (and other forms of mass-murder) one must abandon the idea of "rationality" that has dominated Western thought. There were no "reasons" that Hitler and the Nazis did what they felt they had to do. Rather, the reasons were irrational or psychological--since the production of corpses are of no benefit to anyone.

Richard Koenigsberg

PS: Even a someone like Steven Pinker--a brilliant fellow and very nice guy--is unable to abandon the fantasy that human behavior is governed by rationality.