Dear Jochen,  Thanks very much for your letter. 
 
To me the main feature of Holocaust Denial is the forceful attempt to falsify history.  Falsifications of history are done for political purposes; in the case of Holocaust Denial the effort is directed at undermining Jewish claims of entitlement to compensation, and to make Jews out to be manipulative liars rather than sympathetic victims.
 
I see little relationship between Holocaust Denial and the friendship that a victim of persecution may develop for someone he knows was instrumental in designing the persecution his family fell victim to.  Thet Sambath consecrated hundreds and hundreds of hours and reels of audio and video tape to getting Nuon Chea to explain on tape why he ordered the mass murder, starvation, torture, destruction of 1.5 million Cambodians.  This is the opposite of denial.
 
I surmise that even as he developed his empathy and friendship for Chea, Sambath remained conscious of Chea's monstrous past.  The thing is that having designed and promoted this monstrosity did not prevent Chea from appearing human, gentle, kind, thoughtful, caring.  He is shown conversing in a calm, reflective manner, being attentive and open to his interlocuter, sharing meals, cradling a grandchild (or great grandchild).  These strands of human possibility all coexisted in him, as did Sambath's thirst for a father-substitute and anger and despair at what Chea allowed to happen to his family and so many others. This should be entirely familiar to you of all people, since you insist that we are all capable of the profoundest evil even when we seem like we're good as gold. 
 
Of course Sambath had to be capable of this sublimation in order to carry out his subterfuge.  Perhaps, too, getting Chea to accept him and care for him was a way Sambath could overcome his fears and revulsion about the past. (somewhat analogous to Stockholm Syndrome)
 
Had it been otherwise, had Sambath been concealing bitterness and rage throughout the time he spent with Chea, he would have had to maintain a bifurcated consciousness, in which he continually discounted and reinterpreted Chea's words, manner, body language, apparent intentions, cancelling the humane signals of friendship and caring and replacing them with imagined thunderbolts and threats, reaching down repeatedly inside himself to reconnect with his simmering rage.
 
I wonder if evolution designed us for this sublimation.  In inter-tribal conflicts it seems a common pattern that the victors, after killing many of the enemy, take the surviving enemy widows as wives, and may adopt some of the enemy children to serve and follow them, or even as family members.  To survive, the victims must disguise and swallow their feelings about what has happened.
 
Marion
 
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