Knowing the Holocaust

This chapter provides a conclusion to Accounting for the Holocaust by reflecting on the crucial contributions provided by accounting to the perpetration of the Holocaust. The banal and even benign calculative practices of accounting gave legitimacy to racial justifications for the internment of Jews in concentration camps and ensured the smooth functioning of the Nazi murderous machine. By giving visibility to selected aspects of the conditions to which Jews were condemned, accounting practices denied Jews their humanity. Moreover, accounting tools provided the means to allow the fatal consequences of the way in which the camps were managed to be largely hidden from the outside world. The chapter also calls for further investigations into the role of accounting in enabling the Holocaust both in Europe and in other locations that the German Nazis and Italian Fascists occupied.