The idea of making the century’s great crime look dull is not banal. Politically, psychologically, the Germans had an idea of genius. The banality was only camouflage. What better way to get the curse out of murder than to make it look ordinary, boring, or trite?… Banality is the adopted disguise of a very powerful will to abolish conscience.

Bellow argues against the comforting notion that the Holocaust (and comparable mass crimes) can be explained as mere thoughtlessness or bureaucratic routine. He suggests that making atrocity appear “ordinary” is itself a strategic achievement: dullness becomes a mask that lowers moral alarm, normalizes participation, and diffuses responsibility. In this reading, “banality” is not an absence of intention but a technique—an aesthetic and psychological cover that helps perpetrators and bystanders evade the felt reality of murder. The final claim—banality as a “disguise” for a will to abolish conscience—frames moral numbness as something actively produced, not passively suffered.