Kwiet comments on Himmler's association of the "heaviest task" the SS ever had to perform with the Anständigkeit (decency) that had been preserved of it: Hans Buchheim comments that the accused perpetrators very probably lacked a mens rea ("guilty mind"). Himmler's revaluation of soldierly virtues was not a total negation of moral norms, but a suspension of them for the exceptional situation of the extermination of the Jews, which had been passed off as a historical necessity. Therefore, Himmler endorsed the murder of the Jews not by instruction, but via the "correct" ideological motives, while letting similar murders committed out of sadism or selfishness be prosecutable. Historian Dieter Pohl states: The unsparing portrayal of the genocide in Himmler's speech is thus interpreted as a means to formally render senior SS and Nazi functionaries as co-conspirators and accomplices in the perpetration of the Holocaust. Joseph Goebbels alludes to this view in his diary entry of 2 March 1943: In an entry dated 9 October 1943, Goebbels commented on Himmler's second speech, at which he was present: Holocaust denial Holocaust deniers have frequently attempted to negate Himmler's speeches as proof of the Holocaust. In particular, where Himmler – in his speech of 4 October 1943 – refers to the "Ausrottung des jüdischen Volkes" (extermination of the Jewish people), they will read the verb ausrotten (literally to "root out", aus = out; rott = root) and its related noun Ausrottung to offer a much more benign interpretation, i.e., Himmler was merely referring to the deportation of Jews and a desire to "root them out", as opposed to their mass destruction.Ausrotten can mean "to stamp out/to root out", but only figuratively, e.g., in contexts of concepts or ideals. In the context of living things (such as a people or race), ausrotten accordingly means destroying something so that it cannot return. David Irving considers the usage of the word "Ausrotten" vitally important and also agrees that the term was referring to eradication. He confirms this in an interview from 2007 when he compares its usage with Goebbels half-word "Ausrott..." during the Sportpalast speech from February 1943. In the subsequent paragraph, Himmler compares his disdain for individuals gaining personally (e.g. stealing) from Jewish victims, and the necessity to prevent this personal gain, to becoming sick and dying "from the same bacillus that we have exterminated" (weil wir den Bazillus ausrotten, an dem Bazillus krank werden und