In short, is there a moral culpability here that can be identified and set into its proper categories, the roots of the evil named and thereby differentiated from forces of "Life"?

Or is the Final Solution in fact a window onto some more fundamental or general catastrophe?

In these Notes, William Thomas examines how interpretation of the Holocaust usually functions as a conceptual-moral buffering, e.g., in using it as an occasion for the reaffirmation of favored ideological or philosophical views -- as if we might after all gain a certain benefit from it... But there is no benefit, Thomas suggests; the catastrophe is endless -- thus no affirmation of life is possible now, without "euphemizing" the impact of the Final Solution and what was revealed in it...