Historical "Facts"

I think historical truth is kind of like our economic system: both are very much based on confidence and consensus. Once a slide in confidence or a loss of consensus occurs in the underpinnings of our economy, we enter economic deflation. When the same happens on historical facts, discussions devolve into exchanged salvoes of lies, conspiracies and mistakes.

Wikipedia, in it's discussion of holocaust deniers, says: “According to researchers Michael Shermer and Alex Grobman, there is a "convergence of evidence" that proves that the Holocaust happened. This evidence includes:[22]
1. Written documents—hundreds of thousands of letters, memos, blueprints, orders, bills, speeches, articles, memoirs, and confessions.
2. Eyewitness testimony—accounts from survivors, Jewish Sonderkommandos (who were forced to help load bodies from the gas chambers into the crematoria in exchange for the promise of survival), SS guards, commandants, local townspeople, and even high-ranking Nazis who spoke openly about the mass murder of the Jews
3. Photographs—including official military and press photographs, civilian photographs, secret photographs taken by survivors, aerial photographs, German and Allied film footage, unofficial photographs taken by the German military.
4. The camps themselves—concentration camps, work camps, and extermination camps that still exist in varying degrees of originality and reconstruction
5. Inferential evidence—population demographics, reconstructed from the pre-World War II era; if six million Jews were not killed, what happened to them all? “

This is enough to convince me and most people but we are convinced because we have confidence that when we see such statements numerous times over many years without credible refutation they are true and because there is a huge consensus on that view. There are no first-hand empirical tests we can perform to demonstrate the truth of our convictions. When confidence in historical facts is eroded by one’s bigotries and biases and when the consensus of those with whom you associate supports different conclusions, unfortunately there are no objective facts or empirical tests that will override the lack of confidence or alternate consensus. We all should be careful to consider how convictions on historical truth are shaped by our sentiments, temperaments and biases - - - and by those with whom we associate.