It is one of life’s mysteries: Individuals or groups that wish
to be taken seriously insist that the Holocaust never happened,
that it was in fact an invention of Jews seeking to advance
their own selfish interests at the expense of others. Serious
historians dismiss such claims, yet Holocaust deniers — they
prefer to be called “revisionists” (a more respectable term in
an academic context) — see the allegations against Hitler and
his henchman as a hoax. Given what that tells us about human
nature, is it any wonder that conspiracy theorists inevitably
surface after events such as 9/11 or the Branch Davidian siege
of 1993? Well, as bad as most of us believed the Holocaust was,
it has now been learned that it was actually much worse. A new
study, publicized last week, indicates that under Hitler’s
direction German authorities brutalized minorities — the Jews
were only the most numerous and prominent of them — on a scale
surpassing what was previously known. “The numbers are so much
higher than what we originall