The Final Solution.

(From Irish Independent)

Two of your recent correspondents mention the "final Solution" which, as we are all told, was the plan to annihilate the Jewish population in Europe.

Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg wrote in the 1961 edition of his study, 'The Destruction of the European Jews', that there were two Hitler orders for the destruction of Europe's Jews. The first was given in the spring of 1941, and the second shortly thereafter.

But Hilberg removed mention of any such order from the revised, three-volume edition of his book published in 1985.

As Holocaust historian Christopher Browning has noted: "In the new edition, all references in the text to a Hitler decision or Hitler order for the 'Final Solution' have been systematically excised. Buried at the bottom of a single footnote stands the solitary reference: 'Chronology and circumstances point to a Hitler decision before the summer ended.' In the new edition, decisions were not made and orders were not given."

A lack of hard evidence for an extermination order by Hitler has contributed to a controversy that divides Holocaust historians into "intentionalists" and "functionalists".

The former contend that there was a premeditated extermination policy ordered by Hitler,while the latter hold that Germany's wartime "final solution" policy evolved at lower levels in response to ...